Cubans with an I-94 form, who had already applied for their residency under the Adjustment Act, are being detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Texas, even though their immigration cases had been closed by the Court because the adjustment of status was already in process.
Thus warns the immigration lawyer John Dutton and his colleague Johan de Rojas from John Dutton Law PLLC in Houston in an interview with Tania Costa for CiberCuba.
"We have many people from Cuba with I-94 who had already applied for residency and have been detained, even in cases where their courts had already been 'dismissed', as they had been closed because they had applied for the Cuban Adjustment Act and were waiting for their residency," De Rojas explained.
What exacerbates the situation is that these individuals have no criminal record. According to the lawyer, the arrests occur due to traffic violations or after being involved in local police operations.
"The majority of the cases we have from Cuba with I-94 that have been detained due to a traffic violation or because the police were conducting a local operation or anti-drug or anti-prostitution efforts and they got caught up," he detailed.
The firm also handles criminal cases and has succeeded in getting several of these Cubans released from charges in Harris County due to a lack of evidence against them. However, once ICE takes custody, the situation changes dramatically. "We have been able to get them out of Harris County free of charges because nothing could be proven against them. But then, when they fall under ICE, as we say in Cuban slang, they are screwed," De Rojas pointed out.
The central problem is that immigration judges in Texas are refusing to close the cases of these detained individuals, even though they have a pending Cuban Adjustment application. "These judges do not want to exercise their discretion to end the processes, and these individuals are being detained," De Rojas stated.
Even when lawyers obtain removal orders and appeal them to protect their clients from immediate deportation, they cannot achieve their release. "When we receive removal orders and we appeal these orders to protect them from being removed... we cannot get them out. They will have to wait sitting in their residence in detention. It's not fair," lamented the lawyer.
The ban on the closure of courts began in Texas and has been replicated in Florida. "This started right in Texas, so it has spread to Florida, but it began there with you," Costa said, addressing Dutton.
At first, ICE and the judges argued that the potential residency was "speculative" due to an administrative pause in the Cuban Adjustment process. When that pause ended, the lawyers resubmitted their arguments, but the issue remains. "When the pause ended, we resubmitted our arguments that there was no longer a pause, and now we are dealing with that," De Rojas added.
The case of these Cubans with I-94 falls within a broader tightening of immigration policy: the number of Cubans detained by ICE increased by 463% since October 2024. More recently, a Cuban woman attended an appointment with ICE in August carrying a court order that prohibited her re-arrest, demonstrating that some legal actions have begun to limit the agency's ability to detain individuals who have already been released.
Este caso refleja la incertidumbre que enfrentan muchos cubanos en Estados Unidos con procesos migratorios activos. Sigue de cerca todos los cambios y alertas en nuestra sección de
Here are the contact details for John Dutton:
https://www.emigrandousa.com
Teléfono 713 359 9302
WhatsApp 832 702 0225
Email info@houston-immigration.com
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