SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- The former Cuban judge Melody González Pedrazawho was denied entry to the United States and was taken to a Detention Center in Broward, will remain detained there at least until October 16, according to reports. Martí News.
The media revealed, from records on the court’s official website, that González Pedraza had an asylum hearing this Wednesday and will have a next one on October 16, before immigration judge Barry Chait.
Lawyer Willy Allen, an expert in immigration issues, told Martí News that he is surprised “that he has already had three audiences preliminaries and especially with Judge Barry Chait who does not like to drag out cases.”
This way of proceeding, he said, is usually used when there is no lawyer to represent the person requesting asylum and they are given a margin of time to search for it. It also happens when “prosecutors need to look for more evidence.”
In the previous hearings, the former Cuban judge Melody González Pedraza He appeared without a lawyer before the US court and assumed his own defense.
The hearing held on July 31, said Cuban Diaryshe was quick and there they asked her about her militancy in the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), his reasons for belonging and whether at the time of arriving in the United States he continued to be a member of the PCC or had renounced militancy.
That reason, as she stated, is the main charge against her and is considered a “relevant cause for detention and possible deportation.”
This was revealed to him, prior to the trial, by “kind of assistant social workers,” who told him that his membership in the PCC constituted a serious reason for denying him permission to enter and remain on North American soil.
González Pedraza condemned for an alleged crime of attacking four young people and subsequently emigrated to the United States. He had his parole on May 10, and on the 11th his travel permit, he informed his boss of his trip and they imposed a measure of immediate suspension of his employment relationship.
The sentence against the four boys had been handed down on May 8 and it ordered prison terms of up to four years for three of them, and three years for another.
From the Broward Transitional Center (BTC), in Floridathe former regime official admitted that the process in which she sentenced the four Cubans to prison terms was manipulated by the Villa Clara Provincial Court and the State Security.
González Pedraza also referred to the lack of autonomy of judges in Cuba and mentioned monthly meetings with the Court, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Home Office where judicial decisions are imposed. “We are even mistreated in those meetings, we do not have any type of independence or authority,” he said.
