Without informing him of a cause, this Tuesday the Cuban rafter Francy Pérez Gutiérrez was detained during an immigration appointment at the Department of Immigration and Customs Control (ICE), located in Miramar, in Broward County (Florida), denounced his cousin to Univision Miami. “They took his phone, he called me from prison, that he was the only Cuban. He is afraid of being deported,” he said.
Pérez Gutiérrez is one of more than 30 Cubans who were detained after attending their migration appointment and released last October from the Krome Detention Center in a shackle. “They cited him often until now that they let him in because of his status,” stressed the relative of the rafter.
This Cuban has an I220B status, a supervision order that is issued after a deportation order. “He arrived by sea two and a half years ago. He has gone through a lot of difficulties due to work permits, they denied them, until recently when they came to give it to him,” said Pérez’s relative.
The immigration lawyer, Miguel Inda Romero, told the Univisión Miami journalist, Mario Vallejo, that like Francy Pérez, there are 12 detainees in Georgia who can be deported to the Island as they did with the more than 100 migrants that the US Government returned from Miami on April 24 after the resumption of this type of flight.
Francy Pérez has an I220B status, an order of supervision that is issued after a deportation order. “He arrived by sea two and a half years ago,” said his cousin.
Inda Romero said that the option for Pérez is “what is called a deportation stop,” but this depends on whether “he has relatives who are residents or citizens who could make requests” for him, or simply being released under supervision as there are more than 40,000 Cubans. Pérez has his father in Texas.
The lawyer regretted the situation in which immigrants with I220A and I220B status find themselves. Those with I220A, or on parole, only a judge can decide on their applications, whether for asylum, residency or any other immigration relief, he said.
In November of last year, the Cuban government accepted the repatriation by air of migrants with deportation orders in the US.
Air refoulement was adopted by the Barack Obama administration in 2017 as a limited tool to curb the number of Cubans crossing the border, but had been put on hold during the coronavirus pandemic.
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