Two Cuban illegal immigrants, 89 and 73, face drug and gun charges in Miami after more than 45 years living illegally in the United States.
Miami police say Magdaleno Medina, 73, sold $60 worth of cocaine to an undercover officer on Aug. 19. Officers returned on Sept. 9 with a narcotics search warrant for a trailer and found Cesar Valdes, 89, along with dozens of clear bags of cocaine and marijuana, ammunition, stolen guns, and more than $4,800 in cash.
Fox News reported both men are illegal immigrants from Cuba who entered the country without inspection near Key West in May 1980. They have remained here for more than 45 years. Both now sit in a Miami jail with ICE detainers after pleading not guilty.
Medina faces eight felony charges, including possession of cocaine with intent to sell, cocaine trafficking, and illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition as a convicted felon. Valdes faces five similar drug- and gun-related felony charges.
This was not a first brush with the law. An ICE spokesman said Medina already had four prior felony convictions for cocaine smuggling, drug possession, and drug trafficking. An immigration judge issued a final order of exclusion against him on July 24, 1996.
Valdes carried prior Miami-Dade charges from the 1980s and 1990s, including cocaine possession and probation violation. His final order of exclusion came earlier, on March 10, 1993.
Those exclusion orders were the immigration judges’ removal decisions under the system that existed before April 1997. The men were still here nearly three decades later, still dealing drugs, and still holding stolen guns, according to the police account of the September search.
Their attorney declined to comment. Both entered not-guilty pleas in Miami-Dade County.
An ICE spokesman laid out the agency’s position after the arrests. “Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences,” the spokesman said.
"Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S. We will find you, we will arrest you and we will deport you."
The timeline is straightforward. Two men crossed near Key West without inspection in May 1980. Immigration judges later ordered them excluded. Local police and court records show repeated drug trouble in Miami-Dade across the following decades. An undercover buy in August and a trailer search in September finally produced the current felony cases and the ICE detainers.
Taxpayers and lawful residents lived with the results of that long gap between order and removal. Stolen guns and bags of cocaine in a Miami trailer are the concrete end of a system that let exclusion orders sit unused while the same men cycled through drug cases for years.
When final removal orders gather dust for decades, the next undercover buy is not a surprise. It is the bill coming due.
