MIAMI — In the days since she helped secure her father’s release from Alligator Alcatraz, Arianne Betancourt received a number of congratulatory messages from friends, family, and even strangers.

On Sunday, she received a message from someone she never expected she’d hear from: President Donald Trump.

“Welcome home to Justo Betancourt, whose Daughter, Arianne, fought very hard to free her father from Alligator Alcatraz,” Trump said on social media. “Enjoy your Freedom together!!! President DONALD J TRUMP”

Arianne Betancourt, 33, told the Miami Herald on Monday that she was not sure if the president’s message was a “compliment or a threat.” She said she learned of the president’s message after a friend texted her about it. She thought the friend was joking.

“Maybe he’s having a change of heart on his immigration policies but we also know that the Cuban vote is important to him. So you know it could just be political propaganda,” she said. “I’m as confused as the rest of the world.”

Betancourt said her family does not know how to feel about the message because of what has happened to other immigrant families whose stories have taken the national spotlight, including that of Kilmar Armando Ábrego García, an immigrant from Maryland whom the Trump administration has been fighting to deport.

“This is one of those ‘when hell freezes over’ moments,” she said. “The guy who’s been yelling, deport them all this whole time, is saying, ‘Oh, welcome home.’ Like, this is like a plot twist within a plot twist.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Her father, Justo Betancourt, an immigrant from Cuba, was detained in October 2025 during a routine immigration check-in at Mirimar. He entered the United States in 1990. Court records show that in 2016, he was convicted of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and possession of a firearm. An immigration judge ordered his removal in 2020.

Since October, he was transferred to and from the Everglades detention center twice before his release in early May, following a Fort Myers federal judge’s grant of his habeas corpus petition and an order for his release.

The president’s reaction to the release of Justo Betancourt comes as the state and federal government have signaled the possible closure of the detention center. When the first-of-its-kind immigration detention facility opened, Gov. Ron DeSantis walked Trump and then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem through the bunk beds in chain-link cages at the facility.

Trump had described the facility as “so professional. So well done.”

Betancourt, a community advocate with the social justice organization Workers Circle, had been fighting for her father’s release, appearing weekly since November as part of a freedom-vigil group that has gathered outside Alligator Alcatraz for the past 44 weeks.

The Workers Circle partnered with Sanctuary of the South, an immigration legal services organization, to provide a no cost legal representation to detainees at the Everglades detention facility who have been unable to secure a lawyer.

Noelle Damico, director of social justice at the Workers Circle, said that, in conversations with families of detainees held at the detention center, the organization learned there was a gap in detainees’ ability to afford a lawyer.

“We recognized that what was desperately needed was legal counsel for so many immigrants who were detained and could not afford counsel,” she said.

Since its launch last week, more than 40 detainees and their families have reached out to the program for assistance.

Betancourt, despite not knowing what Trump’s intentions are, is “grateful that my story and the stories of so many others in Alligator Alcatraz are finally getting the recognition that they deserve.”

“We’re bringing more attention, you know, to the inhumanity and the cruelty and just the reality of what is Alligator Alcatraz.”

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