At 79 years old, Julia Benítez no longer clearly remembers where she is. Sometimes, during video calls, she smiles upon seeing her daughter's face. Other times, she confuses her with her own mother and speaks as if she were still in Cuba. But there is one thing she asks almost every day from within the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona: when she will be released.
The story, revealed by Arizona Daily Star, depicts the drama of a Cuban asylum seeker who has spent nine months in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), while her early-stage dementia progresses in an environment that her family describes as confusing and hostile.
Julia crossed the southern border near Lukeville, Arizona, last year to seek asylum. According to her daughter, Dayana Cosme Benítez, a legal resident in Miami, when she turned herself in to the authorities, she was only experiencing occasional memory lapses. Today, after months in detention, she does not know where she is.
"Most of the time, she simply asks when they will release her," Dayana told the American newspaper, tears in her eyes.
Inside the detention center, she is known as "the grandmother." She spends most of her time in a wheelchair that she never needed before being arrested. Other detainees help her get to the dining area, use the bathroom, and connect on video calls with her family. "She has received affection from them, but each one is also suffering their own case," her daughter recounted.
The decline is not only mental. Her diabetes has spiraled out of control, and the stress has worsened her hypertension. Recently, she had to be isolated due to a severe flu. “Her best medicine right now is the love she can receive from her loved ones,” pleads Dayana.
But behind the confinement lies a story that dates back decades and explains why Julia fled.
In 1991, her husband, Daniel Cosme Ramos, was killed by Cuban border guards while attempting to escape the country by sea. For years, the family did not know what had happened. They spent five years searching for him until, according to Archivo Cuba, a member of the guard revealed to them that they had been captured and executed for trying to flee. The case was documented as a forced disappearance perpetrated by the State.
After publicly denouncing the murder, Julia and her daughter claim to have been monitored, harassed, and discriminated against on the island for years. In her asylum application, Julia stated that she was a "direct victim of persecution and intimidation by the communist regime simply for thinking differently."
Dayana remembers her mother as a joyful, nurturing woman who sewed dresses for her birthdays and later helped raise her grandchildren. "Since my father passed away, she has been both a mother and a father to me," she said.
When she decided to travel to the United States, Julia intended to apply for asylum through official channels. However, according to her daughter, the program she planned to use was canceled while she was already in Mexico, which led her to cross the border outside of a port of entry.
Today, she is subject to mandatory detention and was denied a bail hearing. According to the report, ICE did not explain why it does not exercise its discretion to grant her humanitarian release. In a response sent to the outlet, the agency stated that detainees receive appropriate medical care.
Meanwhile, the data reviewed by the Arizona Daily Star shows that under the current administration, arrests of elderly individuals by ICE have increased, while discretionary releases have drastically decreased.
But for Dayana, the figures matter less than the face of her mother behind a screen.
"I have always trusted the laws of this country," she said. "It is not fair that in a country that defends human rights, my mother is in this situation. Her only offense was crossing the border."
Every night, when the video call ends, Julia returns to the same question. She wants to hug her grandchildren. She wants to go out. She wants to understand why, after surviving persecution in Cuba and her husband's murder while trying to escape, her days are spent behind bars, waiting for an answer that never comes.
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