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A ruling from the Board of Immigration Appeals on July 23 (Matter of OYAE) reversed the approval of a protection request in the United States granted by an immigration judge on December 4, 2024, under the Convention Against Torture, to a former lieutenant and ex-officer of Venezuela's Counterintelligence. She claimed that she could be imprisoned and tortured if deported. The Department of Homeland Security appealed the decision and won, considering that the most recent threats received by this former Chavista occurred years ago, long before she left Venezuela, and that after that intimidation, she suffered no harm.
After reviewing the ruling, attorney Willy Allen commented, in statements to CiberCuba, that this sentence applied to a former repressor seeking retirement in the United States could be detrimental to all activists, human rights defenders on the Island, and Cuban opponents awaiting asylum cases.
Basically, the Appeals Board has concluded that although the former chavista official was threatened in July 2021 with two visits from a military unit led by a commander of Maduro to her home for refusing to falsify a document, in 2024 she left Venezuela for the United States without experiencing any threats or harm in the last three years she lived in her country. The former lieutenant claims that after the second visit from the commander, she decided to retire, and it was then that the intimidation stopped.
For the Appeals Board, the abuses he suffered in Venezuela do not demonstrate an individualized risk in his case. Translated into the Cuban context, this would mean that a detention by the political police, at least three years prior to leaving Cuba, would not be sufficient to win an asylum case.
There are currently 13 Cuban activists and a minor, the daughter of Cuban opposition leader José Daniel Ferrer (who is currently in prison), "facing difficulties with their immigration status."
In May, Anamely Ramos, who participated in the San Isidro strike that catalyzed the protests of July 11, shared a letter on her social media denouncing the "migratory vulnerability" faced by well-known activists against the regime such as Omara Ruiz Urquiola, Oscar Casanella, El Funky, Esteban Lázaro Rodríguez López, and Anamely Ramos herself. She also signed the letter addressed to Marco Rubio, to the congressmen and senators from Florida, and to Kristi Noem, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the girl Daniela Patricia Ferrer Reyes.
The letter seeks to "bring visibility to and explore pathways for finding a migratory solution" to their cases. The request is "aimed at preventing the re-victimization, in a democratic environment, of those activists who have actively fought against that same totalitarian regime." Essentially, they are requesting a meeting with Marco Rubio and a suspension of their deportation orders.
The 14 signatories emphasize in writing that their exodus has a "political and forced nature." "Many of the activists on the list were given an ultimatum to leave the country as the only option to avoid criminal prosecution, and some were even released from prison specifically to facilitate their departure, moved directly from jail to the airport. The plan to empty the country of peaceful opposition to Castrism is clear; a new repressive pattern has been confirmed with the activists who have not been allowed to return to Cuba without declared reasonable grounds.", they insist.
Likewise, the letter aims to "draw attention to the political nature of the Cuban people's exile" and therefore recalls "the closure of the political refugee program in 2017, which has not been reopened under any subsequent presidential administrations, even after the U.S. Embassy in Havana was reopened in 2022."
This, in the opinion of the affected opponents, "has led to the cases of political activists and former political prisoners being diluted in the immense tide of people who have emigrated, whether through irregular routes or through programs such as the so-called humanitarian parole. Although the name of this latter immigration program is nearly identical to the previously existing Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), we all know that its criteria were much more flexible in the presentation, assessment, and selection of cases, in addition to not being restricted to Cuba."
These are all the signatories of the letter:
Eliexer Marquez Duany (El Funky)
Daniela Patricia Ferrer Reyes (daughter of José Daniel Ferrer)
Oscar Antonio Casanella Saint-Blancard
Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca
Eralidis Frómeta Polanco
José Rolando Casares Soto
Yamilka Abascal Sánchez
Esteban Lázaro Rodríguez López
Julio Góngora Millo
Alexeys Blanco Díaz
Anamely Ramos González
Omara Isabel Ruiz Urquiola
Yaneris Redondo León
Mariana de la Caridad Fernández León
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