If you have an I-220A form and you receive a deportation order, there is a legal window that you cannot ignore: as long as you have an appeal pending before the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), that order is suspended and cannot be enforced.
This is how immigration lawyer Liudmila Marcelo explained in CiberCuba, where she answered questions from the Cuban community about what to do after receiving a deportation order.
"As long as you have an appeal pending, that deportation order is on hold and cannot be enforced. And while you are there waiting with the order on hold, you benefit from whatever happens with the I-220A," Marcelo stated.
This means that, during the period the process before the BIA lasts —which can extend between two and three years—, any favorable legal advancement related to that document also benefits the appellant. The deadline to file the appeal using the EOIR-26 form is 30 days from the judge's decision.
The presenter Tania Costa did not hide the harshness of the moment but insisted that giving up is not an option. "With what we've been through: we've crossed jungles, folks. We crossed on a raft, and now are we going to get sad because we arrived? No, no, no, now we have to endure," she said.
And what about those who have bail?
The lawyer also distinguished the situation of those who have a bond instead of an I-220A. According to Marcelo, cases with a bond face a more complex landscape, although not necessarily without options.
"The ones with bail are in a difficult situation, different from that of the I-220A. It's a bit more challenging, but because at any moment, if the argument favors the I-220A, the fact is that they have a bail. But this is assessed on a case-by-case basis," he explained.
Marcelo mentioned that the office of attorney Claudia Cañizares would be handling cases for individuals with bail within a class action lawsuit, and he recommended that anyone in that situation reach out to that office to explore their options.
Citizenship interview in Spanish
Another question from the audience addressed whether it is possible to conduct the naturalization interview in Spanish. Marcelo confirmed that this option does exist, but explained that specific requirements must be met with the Citizenship and Immigration Service: being 55 years or older and having been a permanent resident for at least 15 years at the time of submitting Form N-400.
The context in which these clarifications arise is particularly tense. For about the past two months, the United States government has intensified the filing of motions to dismiss asylum cases in individual immigration courts without a thorough analysis of the files, a practice that has generated mass deportation orders against Cubans, even in cases supported by hundreds of pages of evidence.
According to data from TRAC cited in August 2026, more than 1,600 deportation orders against Cubans were issued just in June of that year.
In this scenario, Marcelo insisted that the appeal to the BIA remains the most important tool available, and abandoning it would be equivalent to losing the only real protection against immediate deportation.
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