Customer traffic and sales have fallen in recent weeks at Ñooo Qué Barato, a Hialeah shop that has long catered to Cubans sending supplies to relatives on the island. The store sells school uniforms, baby baskets and rechargeable lamps, but fewer people are coming through the door as fear over what President Donald Trump may do to Cuba keeps travelers away.
Norelbis Ramírez said many customers are holding back because they do not know whether Trump and State Secretary Marco Rubio are preparing to push for regime change in Cuba. “People aren’t traveling to Cuba because they’re afraid of the uncertainty that Trump might do something and they’ll be stranded there,” Ramírez said. That hesitation is showing up in the store, where goods that once moved steadily to families in Cuba are now sitting longer on the shelves.
Ramírez, 52, knows the trade from both sides. She traveled to Cuba at the end of last month after her father fell ill and was hospitalized, her first trip there in two years. What she found was a country in deep disrepair. Ramírez said the hospital had no water or medicines and that the toilets were clogged. She described the streets as garbage dumps and said nobody can predict when electricity will come on or go off.
She also said she flew to Holguín on an almost empty plane and that several passengers were mules, people who carry packages and supplies to Cuba. Direct flights, she said, have decreased even as shipments have increased, a sign that more Cubans are relying on whatever can be sent home rather than on family visits. After returning to Hialeah this week, Ramírez sent her father a mattress, a wheelchair, a walker, a urinal and a commode. The equipment cost $800 in total.
The same uncertainty is shaping decisions for other Cuban migrants in South Florida. Marbelis, who arrived two years ago with her husband and daughter through the CBP One program, has not yet been able to regularize her status under the Cuban Adjustment Act. The Trump administration revoked her and her husband’s work permits, and it suspended all immigration proceedings in December. “Even if I get my residency tomorrow, I’m not going to Cuba until things ease up with Trump. What if they don’t let me back in when I return?” she said.
She is still trying to help her mother from afar. “At least I’m helping my mom. I hope to gather 20 or 30 pounds of things and ship them,” Marbelis said. Gregorio Álvarez, 76, and Estervina Morales, 69, both permanent residents of the United States, also postponed their trip to Cuba. For businesses in Hialeah that depend on those trips and the shopping that goes with them, the slowdown is more than a bad stretch. It is a warning that fear of the next move from Washington is already changing how Cuban families move money, medicine and basic goods across the water.