A Cuban mother raised her voice to demand the release of her 19-year-old son, detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Tacoma, Washington, even though he passed his credible fear interview and his family has already paid the bail set by immigration authorities.
San Karel Sánchez Blanco crossed the border from Mexico in January 2025, after being kidnapped for a month in Zacatecas, Mexico, where his mother paid five thousand dollars in ransom to save his life.
Today, far from finding refuge in the United States, the young man remains imprisoned in an immigration detention center, with the threat of being deported even to a country other than Cuba.
“My son is desperate because he was kidnapped in Mexico for an entire month. He entered at 18 and has now turned 19 in prison, he is extremely skinny, even his glasses have been lost,” shared Glisett Blanco Pérez, the young man's mother, in a statement to Noticias 23 de Univisión.
“They told me they were going to release him, they charged me a thousand dollars and as of today, they haven’t let him go,” she lamented.
From his account on Instagram, journalist Javier Díaz from Univisión 23 revealed that the young man has been detained for nearly 70 days and has started a hunger strike.
His mother, who resides in the United States, insists that the boy is not only a victim of a migration process she deems unfair, but also of political persecution in Cuba, where the family claims to have received threats from the police due to their opposition to the regime.
“I ask everyone who sees this video to have a little heart and let my son go. I only ask for his release, because we are in a country of freedom and they haven't let him go,” the woman cried out.
The context of ICE and Cubans
The case of San Karel is set against an increasingly difficult backdrop for Cuban migrants in the United States. ICE has intensified monitoring and detentions of Cubans with documents like the I-220A, even during routine immigration appointments, which has caused alarm in the community.
In the first seven months of 2025, immigration authorities made over 149,000 arrests, indicating a tightening of immigration policy. Among those detained are Cuban women released after weeks of confinement without clear explanation, young people caught in endless legal processes, and families shattered by uncertainty.
Meanwhile, operations such as “The Worst of the Worst” focus on migrants with serious criminal records, but at the same time, reports are increasing of Cubans without any offenses who remain behind bars despite having proper legal processes.
In the case of San Karel, his mother insists that she is not asking for privileges, but for justice with the release of this young man who, at just 19 years old, has gone from being kidnapped in Mexico to being behind bars in a U.S. immigration facility.
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