The prosecutor who attempted to uphold the deportation process against the Cuban independent journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada faced an insurmountable obstacle this Wednesday: the approval of a waiver from the Department of State supporting the journalist, and a judge who was not willing to disregard it.

The lawyer Liudmila Marcelo, who along with Yelena Guerra achieved the complete dismissal of the charges against Mayeta in Immigration Court, recounted how the decisive moment of the hearing unfolded.

At eleven in the morning on Tuesday, the lawyers and Mayeta met without yet having the key piece of the case. "I, who am the most hopeless in this team, said: this is not going to be resolved, this won’t happen today," Marcelo acknowledged. Two hours later, the situation changed completely.

“At one in the afternoon, we received the message we had been waiting for regarding the step Mayeta needed to take to continue progressing in her residency,” the lawyer explained. That message was the approval of the waiver from the State Department, the document that confirmed the risk of persecution Mayeta would face if she were deported to Cuba.

The prosecutor acknowledged the significance of that news. "This surprise is very pleasing and it benefits you," he said before the judge. However, despite this acknowledgment, he tried to obstruct the process.

It was then that the judge intervened with an argument that left no room for maneuver. "What more do you want to wait for after this?" she asked the prosecutor, adding that the court had no jurisdiction over Mayeta's residency once the waiver was approved: "I have no jurisdiction."

The lawyers, in a motion, questioned the very rationale of keeping the case open. "What are we going to do with a case in court that will truly only waste government resources on something that won’t be resolved here?" they argued.

For her part, Liudmila Marcelo, who hosts a program with Tania Costa every Wednesday at 11:00 AM on CiberCuba, emphasized the seriousness of the position taken by the prosecutor.

"We're not talking about a trivial matter; we're talking about the fact that the State Department itself said [yes] to Mayeta," the lawyer pointed out. She concluded with the phrase that summarizes the outcome: "Who goes against the State Department itself? The prosecutor went against the State Department and lost."

The case had reached this point after weeks of urgent efforts. The judge had denied a motion for postponement submitted by the defense on June 19, setting the hearing firmly for this Wednesday. Days earlier, Mayeta had urgently requested help from the Department of State and from Cuban-American congress members, knowing that deportation would mean, in his own words, being detained the moment he stepped off the plane in Santiago de Cuba.

The attorneys Marcelo and Guerra, who took on the case pro bono just a month prior, had prepared alternative scenarios for each possible move from the prosecutor. However, the judge herself resolved several of those scenarios directly, granting even more than the defense had anticipated.

The result was a complete dismissal of the charges, as if the process had never existed, allowing Mayeta to continue her application for permanent residency with USCIS without any pending deportation order.

The waiver or pardon

In response to CiberCuba's questions about the waiver granted to Mayeta by the State Department, Marcelo explained that the Cuban journalist and opposition figure needed the immigration pardon because individuals entering on a J visa must first meet a requirement to reside in their home country for two years in order to adjust their status. Of course, Mayeta could not fulfill that requirement because he faced, and continues to face, the risk of being detained.

"There are two options: either you ask your country's embassy for a letter stating that they do not oppose your waiver request, or you request a pardon from USCIS, and in this case, through the Department of State and USCIS. That's what he had to do, because, of course, the embassy was not going to provide that letter of no objection. That's why he had to apply for the waiver," said Liudmila Marcelo in statements to CiberCuba.

Additionally, he mentioned that when Mayeta applied for residency for the first time, he did so with a notary and was not sent the waiver. Later on, that was why his residency was denied, because when they requested the waiver, he didn’t have it. Once his residency was denied, that’s when he was put in court, because people who are denied a benefit by USCIS are usually taken to court, which is why he ended up in court in May 2025.

"His first hearing was in June 2025. So, it’s not like he had been in hearings for a long time, but the date of the final hearing approached very quickly, which is why we were racing against the clock in his case. But yes, what he needed was a immigration pardon that would forgive the two years of residence in his home country before he could adjust his status," Marcelo added, assuring that now all that remains is for him to receive his residency through Cuban adjustment.