Taking to the streets in Cuba, seeking asylum in the US, and ending up in the hands of ICE: The Sánchez brothers’ limbo

Even though her children aren’t in the San Miguel del Padrón home in Havana where they grew up, but hundreds of miles away in the Eloy detention center in Arizona, Zaida Martínez prefers them to be in the United States rather than in the hands of the Cuban government. “For a mother, the best thing is always to have her children by her side,” says the 57-year-old. “But I’m terribly afraid they’ll be returned to Cuba. I say this with great pain in my heart, but I hope they stay there before they’re taken here as prisoners.”

Liosmel Sánchez — 25 years old, a former medical student and, according to his mother, “more open when it comes to expressing his feelings and ideas” — and Liosbel Sánchez — 28 years old, a mid-level IT technician and, according to his mother, “more reserved, but very affectionate and sociable” — had attended their appointment on May 20 before the immigration court in Phoenix. It was not the first time they had appeared before the judge and everything had always been in order: as beneficiaries of CBP One, they entered the United States with the temporary permit known as humanitarian parole at the end of 2024, they had no criminal record and, as if that were not enough, they had a justified case of political asylum before the U.S. authorities.

In the days leading up to July 11, 2021, the date of the largest anti-establishment protests in Cuba in more than half a century of Castroism, Liosmel, the youngest of the brothers, and his friend Cristhian González de la Moneda wondered what they would do if a social uprising erupted on the island at any moment. “We knew it was coming, that people would take to the streets,” Cristhian says. “We were also very naive and thought the dictatorship was going to end.” The country was a ticking time bomb between the lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the collapse of the economy with the closure of tourism, the lack of medicines, the collapse of the healthcare system, and constant government manipulation. “The regime would tell you there was one death, when there were five in your neighborhood.”

By then, the young men were part of a meme movement that had taken Twitter by storm. With the power of a meme they pointed out the poor performance of the government, demanded the opening of a humanitarian corridor to address the crisis, or banded together to collect medicines to send to the island’s provinces. At first, Cristhian says, they weren’t trying to challenge the system. “We didn’t go looking for politics; politics found us.”

Cristhian now thinks that, among all his friends, Liosmel “was always the most rebellious,” meaning the one who was most opposed to the current government of Miguel Díaz-Canel. He was also a fan of the dissident rap of Los Aldeanos, the music he shared with the rest of them and that led them to dissent. So on July 11, when Liosmel saw that the protests that had started in the town of San Antonio de los Baños were spreading across the country, he called Cristhian. “What are you going to do?” he asked. And they did what they had agreed to. They notified a third friend, took the P-2 bus to central Vedado, found the seafront, and walked to the rhythm of the song Patria y Vida, while groups of Cubans joined them on a journey that took them to the Havana Capitol. A sea of disgruntled people, eager for change, was gathered there.

This was followed by a series of scenes that remain with them to this day: the call to Liosmel to warn them that Díaz-Canel had given “the order to fight,” the groups of soldiers with clubs in their hands, the arrest of one of his friends, and the visits to several police stations throughout the capital to find him.

Liosbel, for his part, had also taken to the streets in his neighborhood. Their mother didn’t know at the time that her children had joined the revolt. “I never imagined they were among the young people who raised their voices, calling for change for our country,” she says. She found out after the arrest of one of her children’s friends. “I felt scared, very scared that they would also be arrested or that something worse would happen to them.” That fear was not unfounded. The protests resulted in the arrests of more than 1,500 people, with sentences that can extend to up to 20 years in prison.

Although the Sánchez brothers didn’t go to prison, they didn’t escape the long shadow of repression in Cuba either. Until they left the country, they weren’t left alone. Liosbel was robbed at his small plumbing business, which the authorities inspected week after week. Liosmel was frequently interrogated by State Security at the Manuel Fajardo School of Medical Sciences. “They were threatened,” says his mother. “Liosmel was told that he could even lose his career. That’s why they decided to leave Cuba, because they could no longer bear the injustices they experienced on a daily basis and knew that at any moment they would come for them and take them to prison if they stayed here with their ideas against the regime.”

Asylum in the Trump administration’s sights

Once in the United States, the Sánchez brothers spent several months in Seattle, in a room in Cristhian’s house. Cristhian arrived in the country a year before them after receiving threats at the University of Computer Science, where he studied, for his participation in the July 11 protest. He never let them work, instead asking them to stay calm, help with the housework, and wait patiently for their work permits.

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained them, the Sánchez siblings had moved into an apartment they could now afford. They were happy. They had bought a television, new dishes, a dish rack, and several trash cans. “They were excited about their house,” Cristhian says.

Around noon on May 20, Cristhian thought it strange that the siblings hadn’t sent him a message letting him know how their case had gone in court. From Cuba, their mother had texted them, but she still hadn’t received a response. “I wrote to them again, but nothing. I called them, and they didn’t answer either. I was worried by the silence; I started to cry,” Zaida recalls.

The suspicion that they had been detained was confirmed when Cristhian entered their identities into the ICE tracking system and saw that, indeed, his friends were new victims of Donald Trump and his administration’s anti-immigrant crusade. “My world fell apart,” he says. “I thought it was a mistake, that they were going to release them.” But the justice system had closed the Sánchez brothers’ asylum case. Since being detained, they have started over. They already passed an interview in which they validated their credible fear and are now waiting to defend their asylum claim in prison at the end of September.

They are not the only ones who have come to the United States fleeing repression in their countries and whose asylum applications have been denied or dismissed, the protection that for years was granted to those forced to leave their country for political reasons. Cuban rapper Eliexer Márquez Duany, known as El Funky, co-author of the song Patria y Vida, which became an anthem of the 2021 protests, had his application for permanent residency rejected after applying for the Cuban Adjustment Act, which has protected emigrants from the island for decades. Venezuelan opposition activist Gregory Antonio Sanabria Tarazona, who spent more than three years at the notorious El Helicoide prison, was detained by ICE when he appeared in immigration court in June.

The courts have become new focal points for the Republican administration’s hunt for migrants, from where they are directly transferred to ICE. According to immigration attorney Willy Allen, it’s part of the same political strategy. “The government has to detain 3,000 people a day. It’s very difficult to find 3,000 criminals, but it’s very easy to find 3,000 people who show up in court and do everything right under the law,” he asserts.

The United States has granted the highest number of asylum applications of any country worldwide in recent years. As of the end of last year, it had nearly 1.5 million pending applications, according to the American Immigration Council. But many agree that the number of asylum cases denied is currently higher. In March of this year — the latest month for which figures are available — 76% were rejected by authorities.

Allen asserts that, in his 40 years as a lawyer, he has never had a client detained in court. Now, ICE has taken four of them. “They started closing cases to have the excuse to detain people without bail,” he says. “In jail, they will have to undergo a credible fear interview, and only if they pass it can they stay.” However, the lawyer insists that court proceedings have become more complicated, and that even those who arrive in the U.S. fleeing repression in their countries are left in “very vulnerable” conditions: in limbo, like Liosmel and Liosbel Sánchez.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition