Susanne García Nazco has been detained for over six months in a correctional facility in Louisiana after being arrested by immigration authorities on charges of fraud. The Cuban maintains that she acted in good faith and submitted a document to the authorities that she believed was the legitimate approval of a parole.
Her case, revealed in an exclusive report by Telemundo 51, illustrates the complex scenario that Cuban migrants with an I-220A face when they turn to intermediaries to try to regularize their situation, ultimately becoming involved in alleged immigration fraud.
García Nazco arrived in the United States through the southern border in 2022 and received an I-220A form, a parole order that does not equate to a parole and does not by itself grant permanent immigration status.
In 2023, he applied for a parole with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Approximately two years later, he received a document that supposedly confirmed the approval of that application.
Convinced that it was legitimate, she even presented it before an immigration judge.
"I presented that document before a judge. The judge had canceled my hearings and told me to wait for my residency, either through marriage petition or the Cuban Adjustment Act," she recounted from the facility where she remains in custody.
According to his testimony and that of his family, nothing at that moment led them to suspect that the document might have issues.
Her mother claims that ICE told her not to return
Leydis Nazco, mother of Susanne, stated that her daughter even presented her situation to ICE agents at the office in Miramar, Florida.
According to his account, he was informed there that he no longer needed to continue reporting periodically to the agency.
“In Miramar, he went and they told him, the same people from ICE said to him: ‘Don’t come back if you already have a parole, what are you doing here?’,” he recalled.
However, in February 2026, García Nazco was arrested as part of an ICE investigation related to immigration fraud.
Since then, she has been held in Louisiana.
The Cuban woman insists that she was unaware of any potential irregularities in the document and claims that if someone had warned her of a problem, she would have immediately approached the authorities alongside her lawyer.
"If someone had perhaps told me at some point: 'Look, there is a mistake or there’s a problem,' I wouldn’t have submitted it either and would have gone directly to USCIS to resolve the issue with my attorney," she stated.
More than $30,000 in lawyers' fees
For her husband, Orlando Mestre, a U.S. citizen, the family may have been the victim of a fraud scheme.
"I believe so!" he replied when asked about that possibility.
However, more than six months after the arrest, the family is still trying to clarify what happened to the document that Susanne believed to be valid while she is engaged in an expensive battle to avoid her deportation.
"We have paid about 30 thousand dollars in lawyers," Mestre explained.
The economic impact has been such that she decided to launch a campaign on GoFundMe to raise money for her appeal process. At the time of the report's publication, the initiative had raised $1,885 of a $2,400 goal.
In addition to the distress caused by the detention, there is the family situation. Her mother is a cancer patient, and along with Susanne's husband, they hold onto their hopes for the appeals process.
A warning for Cubans with I-220A
The case comes to light amid growing concern among thousands of Cubans who entered the United States and received an I-220A form.
At the beginning of August, Cuban-American Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar warned about information received from ICE regarding a scheme in which individuals were seeking notaries to obtain forged parole documents.
Although Salazar's warning was not directly related to the García Nazco case, the congresswoman urged migrants not to present fraudulent documents to federal authorities.
"I understand that the situation is tough, but by falsifying a document and presenting it to federal authorities, what they are doing is digging their own grave; that is punishable by law," he warned.
The conscious use of fraudulent immigration documentation can have serious criminal and immigration consequences. However, in Susanne's case, one of the key issues will be to determine what happened with the document and what level of knowledge she had regarding its alleged irregularity.
At present, García Nazco is facing a deportation order and has been denied bail, while his family is trying to keep the legal route open to prevent him from being expelled from the United States.
After more than half a year in detention, the Cuban made a desperate plea from Louisiana while awaiting a decision that could determine her future.
"I'm asking, please help me get out of here!" she cried out.
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