The Cuban-American lawyer Wilfredo Allen analyzed the real possibilities of return to the United States for the 69 Cubans deported to the Central African Republic on October 21, and his conclusion is clear: it depends on the procedural status of each case, and for most, the path back is extremely difficult.
The group —64 men and five women— was transferred on a flight that departed from Alexandria, Louisiana, with stops in Senegal, Equatorial Guinea, and Burundi, after a journey of 50 to 60 hours handcuffed at the wrists and ankles. Upon arriving in Bangui, the capital, they lacked immigration documents, legal status, and authorization to work.
Allen, interviewed by journalist Tania Costa, established three categories to evaluate the options of each deportee.
The first group consists of those who were expelled for criminal offenses. "Those with criminal records will never return," said the lawyer, although he clarified that they represent a minority within the group.
The second category includes those who have exhausted the administrative process: an immigration judge denied them asylum, and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) rejected their appeal. For them, Allen stated, "returning will be almost impossible, but not impossible." The only window he mentioned is hypothetical: if the class action regarding the I-220A form is successful and that document is recognized as parole, some may attempt to reopen their cases from abroad.
The third category —which Allen sees as having the best prospects— is that of those who were deported without having obtained a final resolution. "These individuals have the best chance of being able to return through the Federal Courts," he noted.
Within this last group, he mentioned a case that he deemed particularly serious: that of a person who had a habeas corpus petition filed and no response when they were deported. “They had a habeas corpus petition submitted, they had not received a response to the habeas corpus, and they were deported. That is already tragic,” Allen said.
This profile matches that of Eric González Peña, a 44-year-old Cuban detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Texas in March 2026 and sent to Bangui on October 21, despite having an approved family I-130 petition —his wife is a U.S. citizen— and a pending habeas corpus in the courts. His family stated that a judge had set November 1 as the date for protection against deportation, but González was expelled ten days earlier. As of November 3, he continued in Bangui without documents or a work permit.
Tania Costa emphasized during the interview that most of the deported individuals do not have serious criminal records: "Many of them have no offenses; their only crime is having entered the United States illegally."
In parallel, the lawsuit Bello-Rubio v. Noem, filed by nearly 990 Cubans with form I-220A in the Southern District Court of Florida, seeks for the courts to acknowledge that this document is equivalent to the parole required by the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 to apply for permanent residency. The government filed a new motion to dismiss the case in October.
The deported Cubans in Bangui publicly requested that the Democratic Party and the U.S. Congress intervene to facilitate their return, while the State Department classifies the Central African Republic at level 4 — "do not travel" — due to armed conflict, militias, kidnappings, and health risks.
El caso de los cubanos deportados a África forma parte de un panorama migratorio en constante cambio. Sigue todas las novedades sobre deportaciones, cortes y derechos en nuestra sección de
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