Sailin Escalona has not set foot in Cuba for seven years, without embracing her daughters, without seeing her mother or her brothers. This September, she finally returns, though not in the way she dreamed of when she crossed 12 borders, including the Darién jungle, to reach the United States.
In a series of posts on her TikTok account @sailin1981, Sailin shared, with an honesty that earned her tens of thousands of views, how she came to sign her voluntary resignation before a judge. The story is not straightforward, but she tells it without mincing words.
She arrived in the United States in 2021 via the so-called southern route: first Uruguay, then the crossing on foot through the Darién, and afterwards the journey towards the U.S. border. Two years prior, she had been in Uruguay and five years on U.S. soil. Upon arrival, she was detained for a month. When she was released, it was with an I-220A status. In short: a limbo.
El caso de Sailin refleja la compleja realidad migratoria que enfrentan miles de cubanos en EE.UU. Sigue toda la actualidad sobre procesos migratorios, salidas voluntarias y más en nuestra sección de
For five years, she tried to normalize her situation. Nothing. Meanwhile, her youngest daughter, who was five when Sailin left, turned 12. "I've thrown in the towel; I'm tired of fighting against the impossible," she wrote in the comments of one of her videos. "Out of 1,000 people with I-220A, only one manages to get residency. There are people waiting since 2017."
The final decision came during her second hearing before a judge. The options were two: voluntary departure or formal deportation. With deportation, the judge would have imposed a ten-year ban on returning to the United States. With voluntary departure, that door remains slightly open. "It was my decision in front of a judge, but because they don’t give you more options," she explained to those who didn’t understand why she was leaving.
She was also weighed down by the fear of being detained again. "They wanted to keep me detained for deportation, and given the circumstances, I decided to request my release. I know it wasn't the right time, but when I got here, I was detained for a month, and I didn't want to go through that again," she responded to a follower who was urging her to hold on a little longer.
Her videos struck a very sensitive chord. The one announcing her voluntary departure garnered over 65,000 views and nearly 230 comments, many from Cubans and Latin Americans with almost identical stories: the Darién, the I-220A, years of waiting, families split in two. Several wrote to her urging not to give up. She responded to them with affection, but with clarity: "I don’t tell anyone to give up; this country offers many opportunities, but I no longer had any options left."
What hurts the most in her story, as she herself says, is not the migratory failure. It is the time. Five years without being able to embrace her daughters, her mother, her brothers. "Putting your life in danger and sometimes seeing death up close doesn’t mean your dreams come true," she wrote in August.
But Sailin does not go down defeated. In her most recent post, the description says it all: "God give me strength, I am going with my daughters and not everything is lost, there are still battles to fight."
His case is part of that of other Cubans with I-220A who have chosen voluntary departure due to the impossibility of regularizing their status, a phenomenon that has intensified in 2026 and reflects the plight of thousands of Cuban families separated for years without resolution.
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