They are teachers, engineers or farmers, all seeking freedom in the United States. But after an unexpected policy chance and an end to special treatment that allowed the majority of Cuban migrants to remain legally in the country, more than 1,300 are now being held at detention centers across the country awaiting their fate to be decided by immigration judges.
"What I heard were stories of people who felt that they literally could not live in Cuba any more," said Wendi Adelson, executive director of the Immigration Partnership & Coalition (IMPAC) Fund, a Florida-based organization that raises funds for the defense of undocumented residents without criminal convictions.
"Many say that not even in their wildest dreams would they have imagined that the United States would treat them this way," she said. "They thought that this was a country of freedome and this was what they came for, to live without the government having its boots on their necks — and now this?"
Read more from our news partners at the Miami Herald.
