Yoelí Altagracia Bracho Casanova, a 26-year-old Venezuelan, who was living with her Cuban-American husband in Jacksonville, Florida, was arrested last Thursday by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during a immigration appointment. Within hours, she was transferred to a detention center in Texas along with her daughter Rebeca Peña Bracho, who is one year and eight months old, a U.S. citizen by birth and the daughter of a Cuban-American.
The girl’s father, Samuel Peña, and her maternal grandmother, Yosvania Fajardo, both Cubans with U.S. citizenship, narrated the case in an interview with Tania Costa where they described how ICE refused to accept the legal documents that the family's attorney attempted to submit to halt the deportation.
According to Samuel Peña, the lawyer arrived at the appointment with a "stay of removal," a request for forgiveness for unlawful entry, and a residency application, but the agents rejected the documents, even though the young woman has an approved I-130.
"When the lawyer went to deliver the stay of removal, they refused to take the document," Peña explained, adding that the attorney told them he could submit it the next day in Orlando.
That same morning, at two o'clock, mother and daughter were transferred to Texas. "They moved them at two in the morning, with a one-and-a-half-year-old girl, that is, out of jurisdiction to seal the document," the father reported.
The lawyer, according to Peña, was astonished. "He said that this had never happened to him, that it felt like a disrespect, like a slap in the face, as if to say, no matter what you do, we're going to do what we want," Samuel reported, citing the lawyer's words.
From Thursday to Sunday, the family had no communication with Yoelí Bracho or the baby. The first call came on Sunday from an unidentified number and lasted less than five minutes.
Samuel Peña went to the ICE office seeking information because no one was notifying him about anything, and they also told him that his wife had a phone and the freedom to call him. "Do you think that if she had access to a phone, she wouldn't have contacted me since Thursday when she was detained?" he replied to an officer.
Yoelí Bracho had been in the United States for five years. He entered with a humanitarian parole, had no criminal record, and his family petition I-130 was approved in 2024. The lawyer's team described the file as "the most complete case" they had ever handled.
The girl's grandmother, Yosvania Fajardo, devastated, publicly requested that a judge review the case before her daughter-in-law is deported. She did this an hour before finding out that it's too late and Yoelí Bracho and her granddaughter are already in Venezuela.
"I know there is someone who has the power to intervene and make a request for a judge, before she is deported and before putting her on that plane, to want to see her case, because if I know that happens, that judge will let her stay in this country," declared Yosvanía Fajardo, when she was still unaware that her daughter-in-law had already been deported along with her granddaughter.
Fajardo also denounced unequal treatment toward naturalized citizens. "I feel that there is discrimination between American citizens born here and American citizens who are naturalized," he stated.
The family reached out to several political representatives. Senator Rick Scott's office replied by email that they could not intervene. Congressman George Robinson had not responded at the time of the interview. Representative María Elvira Salazar, known for her work on immigration issues, could not take action because the family resides outside her district.
This case recalls that of Heydi Sánchez Tejeda, a Cuban mother deported from Tampa in April 2025 during a routine appointment with ICE, leaving her baby with the father, a U.S. citizen.
The lawyer warned that, once deported, the legal process for Yoelí Bracho to return to the United States could take up to 10 years. "Just imagine, 10 years without being able to see her, watching my little girl grow, they grow from one day to the next at that age," lamented Samuel Peña.
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