Immigration attorney Wilfredo "Willy" Allen expressed disappointment this Monday, during his live program on CiberCuba, that the detention policy of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has not undergone any changes. He reacted to the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) denial regarding reports that circulated over the weekend among immigrant communities, including the Cuban community, discussing a new instruction given to ICE agents to suspend the detention of immigrants without a criminal record.
Over the weekend, several media outlets —including the Daily Wire— published reports based on supposed internal sources from ICE that claimed there was a directive to pause the arrests of undocumented immigrants without criminal records. The news generated momentary relief, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied it on Sunday, stating that no one is off the table, and President Trump reaffirmed that there are no changes to his immigration policy.
"I saw some comments that I knew were completely false, because if you look at what this government has always said, what DHS has said, it's that they are going to detain everybody," Allen stated.
The lawyer explained the operational reason that makes it impossible to exclude individuals without a criminal record: ICE operates with weekly arrest quotas, and statistically, that group represents the majority of their detainees.
"They have a quota of detaining X thousands of people weekly, and if they don't detain individuals without criminal records, they don't detain anyone, because statistically more than 70% of the people they have apprehended have no more than a traffic ticket," he pointed out.
This figure matches the data from the TRAC project, which by July 11, 2026, reported that 70.6% of individuals in ICE custody had no criminal convictions.
For Allen, any announcement of a pause in arrests would be purely an electoral strategy. "If they say they are not going to arrest people without criminal records, it reduces their quota by 70%. They have said, I’m going to create a fairy tale for the November election, to make it seem like they are being more reasonable when they are not. It’s all theater."
The lawyer illustrated the seriousness of the situation with recent cases of Cubans caught in this scenario. One of them entered with humanitarian parole almost three years ago and was working as an Uber driver when the police stopped him due to the vehicle's license plate information.
"Right now, just leaving my office, 15 minutes ago: a Cuban man entered under humanitarian parole, was driving for Uber, got pulled over for his license plate, he's detained, they arrested him and are accusing him of being a foreigner arriving in the United States," Allen reported.
Being classified as a "foreign national in the process of arrival," the immigration judge has no jurisdiction over his case and cannot grant him bail, even though he has been waiting for two years for a decision on his residency application under the Cuban Adjustment Act. "We are trying to push for USCIS to interview him in jail. It's a bit of a difficult process, but it’s what we have to do right now," he explained.
On Friday, another Cuban who entered through CBP One and did not request asylum in time was detained in Texas; the judge has already ruled that it is too late to submit that application, and he remains without bond.
The situation is set against a backdrop of a sustained escalation of ICE operations during 2026. The detentions at airports increased by 1,200% between June and September, and the agency set records for arrests in the summer, with less than a quarter of those arrested having criminal records in July, compared to nearly 60% in December 2024.
"So it's really sad, but the elections go on; the plan remains to stop as much as possible," Allen concluded.
Las operaciones de ICE y sus implicaciones para las comunidades inmigrantes siguen siendo un tema en constante evolución. Mantente informado en nuestra sección de
Filed under: