Florida Trump Loyalist Watches 20-Year Relationship Crumble After Ice Locks up His Fiancée Over 3 Xanax Pills

Wayne DeMario voted for Donald Trump. His fiancée of 20 years, Yamile Alcantu, prayed for him to win. Together, they ran a guitar shop in Miami, built a life, and believed the president's immigration crackdown would target criminals—not people like them. Eight months later, DeMario is alone behind the counter of Wayne's Guitar World, sobbing through interviews and begging the man he helped elect to bring her back home.

Alcantu, who moved to the US from Cuba 25 years ago through the State Department's Visa Lottery programme, was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in June after a routine annual check-in—the kind she had attended without incident for years. What ultimately triggered her detention was not anything recent. It was a deportation order dating back to 2008, stemming from a traffic stop in which, according to DeMario, officers searched her bag and found three Xanax pills. 'They go through her purse, and then they dump the purse out, and three Xanax pills fall out,' DeMario said.

'They Just Blanket Everybody'

The moment ICE came for Alcantu was, by DeMario's account, anything but routine. 'They grabbed her, put her in shackles and chains,' he said, describing it as a 'kidnapping'. She was first taken to a detention facility in Jacksonville before being moved to Louisiana, where she has now been held for eight months. According to DeMario, Alcantu has not yet appeared before an immigration judge.

What makes the story particularly striking is that DeMario has never hidden his political loyalties. He was—and remains—a Trump voter. He believed the administration's immigration enforcement would be measured and targeted. 'I really thought this was just going to be something more organised, but it's obviously not,' he said. 'They just blanket everybody.' His pain has now turned into a direct, tearful plea to the president himself: 'Please get her home. Please, she does not deserve this. She is the sweetest person, and she prayed for you.'

A Crisis Waiting to Happen

Alcantu's vulnerability was not new. The 2008 deportation order had lingered over her for nearly two decades, yet for years, ICE allowed her to check in annually without action. That changed under the Trump administration's sweeping immigration enforcement push, which has seen nearly 200,000 people deported in the first seven months of the president's second term.

The administration's broader posture toward Cuban nationals has also hardened. In January 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14165, directing the Department of Homeland Security to terminate humanitarian parole programmes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. This policy has left hundreds of thousands of people in legal limbo. For Alcantu and DeMario, the fear is not abstract. Cuba is currently facing power outages, water shortages, and economic collapse following disruptions to Venezuelan oil supplies after the capture of Nicolás Maduro in January 2025.

The Cost of Waiting

Beyond the emotional toll, DeMario is now facing a financial one. Without Alcantu able to work, he is carrying the guitar shop alone while managing mounting immigration attorney's fees and detention-related costs. On his GoFundMe page, he wrote: 'She is my fiancé. She is the love of my life. She is my best friend... I want to continue living with her for the rest of my lives.'

His case is one of several that have drawn attention as Trump supporters find themselves caught in the very enforcement machinery they once cheered on. The human cost of broad deportation policy rarely aligns neatly with political allegiance, and for DeMario, the reckoning has arrived in the most personal way imaginable. 'I mean, people say I voted for this,' he said through tears. 'But I didn't vote for THIS!'

The case of Wayne DeMario and Yamile Alcantu underscores a wider tension in the Trump administration's immigration enforcement — one that increasingly ensnares long-settled residents, including those with deep ties to US communities and no recent criminal history. As deportation numbers rise and parole programmes for Cuban nationals are dismantled, stories like theirs are likely to multiply, forcing voters and policymakers to confront the human boundaries of blanket enforcement.