Why is the U.S. government so intent on keeping this innocent man in prison? | Opinion
Cuban journalist Yariel Valdés González has committed no crime.
He didn’t sneak in through the border.
He asked for asylum at an authorized entry point, as allowed by U.S. law and is recognized internationally as proper protocol for the persecuted to seek refuge.
Yet, Valdés has been in immigration detention for almost a year now — shuttled from prison to prison like a common criminal — despite having won his political asylum claim.
He had his day in court, and he won.
He should be free.
“I don’t know why this is happening to me,” Valdés tells me from the River Correctional Center in Louisiana, the latest in a series of ICE holding facilities where he is kept under a protocol that mimics criminal incarceration.
The excessive interruption during our telephone conversation by a recorded reminder that we’re being listened to and recorded is a chilling reminder of his condition.
“No, I’m not doing well,” he says. “I’m desperate.”
This is the second time I write about Valdés because of the arbitrary nature of his extended confinement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and the harsh treatment the soft-spoken young man is receiving far from the family in Miami ready to welcome and support him.
Valdés is a gay man, a freelance correspondent for the Washington Blade, a publication covering the LGBT community since 1969 that is supporting his bid for asylum. He was persecuted in Cuba for writing for the Blade, among other reasons, and I have to wonder if the U.S. government is also punishing him now for writing about his detention and border issues during his passage through Mexico.
This is, after all, a vindictive administration.
In the photo that accompanies this column, Valdés is reporting from a lesbian-run migrant shelter in the border town of Mexicali with Blade international news editor Michael K. Lavers. In a photo posted in the Blade with a story about his asylum bid, he is photographing the border wall in Tijuana.
“Free Yariel!” is the headline of the latest story.
There’s no question Valdés is being singled out or punished for something by ICE, an agency that seems accountable to no one and is using taxpayer funds to line the pockets of the private companies that keep immigrants and refugees like Valdés incarcerated longer than necessary.
There’s no other good reason for his detention.
Credible asylum case
Twice, immigration authorities have found his case credible.
At the Calexico West Port of Entry, the officer who interviewed him found him credible and granted parole, but ICE refused to release him. Then, on Sept. 18, the immigration judge who reviewed his case granted him asylum.
But while other Cubans in similar proceedings have been paroled, ICE is still keeping Valdés jailed, despite the fact that he poses no flight risk. The excuse now is that the administration is appealing his asylum win.
But it has been five months already, and no decision, and no parole is in sight. Only a move to the facility he’s in now with slightly better conditions than Bossier Parish Medium Security Facility has benefited him.
“I was told that before, when there was an appeal, you would be released, but with this administration, there’s no release, no hope, no answer,” Valdés says. “Still, I see others being paroled.”
His ultimate fear is having his hard-won asylum overturned and being put into deportation proceedings to Cuba.
“I’m very afraid of what else might come.”
This case illustrates how the Trump administration puts on an anti-Communist, anti-Castro show in Miami for political gain, then contradicts its own hard-line Cuba policy internally.
It’s Kafkaesque.
Fits asylum definition
The State Department, which was made aware of Valdés’ case by a Herald reporter, cites in its Human Rights Report the relentless persecution in Cuba of journalists who don’t toe the government line and has sanctioned Cuban officials for “gross violations of human rights.”
And here is one of the persecuted at our door, his case laid out in a 70-page document that chronicles with supporting evidence why he fled the island — and convinced immigration judge Timothy Cole to grant him asylum — and the Trump administration decides to appeal.
Why is the U.S. government so intent on keeping this innocent man in prison?
Who polices ICE when it acts like a rogue agent, making decisions that should belong to the courts?
“The asylum process has been reduced to a lottery system,” says Jeff Migliozzi, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s immigrant justice work. “[Outcome] depends on which immigration judge you have, one with a 90% denial rate or 99%. So many people have credible asylum cases and they’re not granted asylum.”
And here’s a journalist who has passed that high bar — yet is still in prison.
How long can ICE keep him imprisoned claiming an appeal before this can be called an outrageous violation of human rights and failure of due process?
That time is now. Free Yariel Valdés.
This story was originally published February 14, 2020 at 12:19 PM.
