A Cuban woman carrying the I-220A form shared on TikTok how she experienced her reporting appointment with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a process she described as "a day filled with fear" due to the uncertainty of what might happen.
The woman, identified on the platform as @aricleaning (FamiliaMarrero), posted the video on August 5 while preparing a bouquet of flowers for the Virgin, to whom she had asked the night before to grant her a successful outcome for her appointment with her husband.
The aggravating factor in her case is significant: just a month earlier, an immigration judge had already determined that she is deportable to Cuba, which made the meeting even more tense.
"I am [the holder of the I-220A], I had a court hearing a month ago in which the judge decided that I am deportable and to Cuba, so imagine that we were extremely nervous about this ICE appointment," she explained in the video.
They arrived at 8 in the morning and found an unusually long line. They were the last group to enter, and just before their turn, the arrival of several ICE vans caused panic among those present. In the end, there were no arrests in their group.
Upon submitting her documents, the woman voluntarily filed a parole application, even though it had been denied on previous occasions. The officer accepted it without committing to providing a response that same day.
After about 30 minutes of waiting, the officer called her with two pieces of news: the parole was denied again, and also ICE could not take action on her case. "He told me that they do not have jurisdiction over my case because the one who will decide is the judge; they cannot give me a value or anything, they do not have jurisdiction to do so," she recounted.
The result was the best possible given the circumstances: a new appointment in one year, without detention or deportation.
The protagonist clarified that on that same day, there were indeed people who were detained: "There were already other individuals with offenses who, yes, they knew they were going to surrender, that they were... yes, they took them away."
His message to other Cubans in a similar situation was straightforward: "If you have an appointment now with ICE recently, don’t be afraid, at least those of us in court, because they won’t deport you unless you have crimes."
The case illustrates the legal complexity faced by hundreds of thousands of Cubans with I-220A in the United States, a form that does not equate to parole nor guarantee access to the Cuban Adjustment Act. The legal dispute over whether the I-220A can be equated to parole for immigration purposes remained unresolved by mid-2026, with the final ruling from the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) still pending.
The results of these appointments have been quite varied: some Cubans have left without incidents with a new appointment for the following year, while others have ended up with deportation orders or even expedited removal after a routine appointment.
The woman still does not have a date for her next court hearing and is in the process of sending the documents requested by the judge. In the meantime, she kept her promise: "A promise is a debt, and yesterday I asked her, and she fulfilled it," she said as she placed the bouquet of flowers before the image of the Virgin.
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