In a destroyed home on the outskirts of Havana, Heidi Sanchez shows pictures of past life.
She flips, though images of iPhone visits to Sea World with her husband and 17-month-old daughter and couple, who dresses in Santa’s clothing for Christmas.
“I don’t know if it was the American dream,” Sanchez said. “But it was my dream, my family.”
This dream and family were detached in late April, when Sanchez was deported from Florida to her home Cuba, although her daughter and her husband are US citizens.
Sanchez moved to the United States from Mexico in 2019, when the first Trump administration required asylum seekers to wait on the other side of the border for immigration appointments as part of the “Stay in Mexico” program.
But Claudia said that threats of cartels, which are often aimed at Cubans for abduction and extortion, prevents her from being appointed. When she finally crossed the border again, she told immigration agents that her life was at risk in Mexico and was allowed to stay. After nine months of arrest for immigration, she was released and managed to join her family in Tampa.
There she studied to become an assistant for nurses, met her husband, a naturalized US citizen from Cuba and after several in vitro (IVF) fertilizer treatments, finally realized her dream of becoming a mother.
Sanchez claims that he hardly fits the stereotype of the dangerous undocumented immigrants, for which the Trump administration says he is taking down the US streets.
“I’ve never had so much as a ticket,” she said.
However, with the hearing of the immigration she had missed in 2019, the changing political resources for Cuban immigrants who had previously had a residence in the United States, but guaranteed, Sanchez’s time in the United States expired.
In April, Sanchez contacted the immigration and application of customs (ICE) that the next day had moved an appointment with officers. However, her lawyers told her that she was probably routine accommodation. Instead, when she showed up for a meeting with her daughter, Kaylin and a lawyer, Ice agents told her she was remanded and hand over her daughter to relatives.
“Call the father to come to take her, you stay here,” Sanchez said, agents inform her.
Heidi Sanchez with his daughter. – Patrick Oppmann/CNN
“Don’t take my daughter”
“I told them,” Don’t take my daughter, “Sanchez told CNN. “They never said if I could take her or not with me.”
In a statement, the Ministry of Interior Security denied Sanchez and her lawyer’s accounts that she was not given the opportunity to take her daughter with her.
“We are responsible for protecting our children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement authorities to ensure that the children are safe and protected,” said DHS Assistant Trisha McLaughlin.
“The Trump administration gives parents in this country to illegally deport and take control of the process of departing with the potential ability to restore the legal, right path and to return to live the American dream,” the statement continued.
Sanchez’s lawyer said they had tried to stop her deportation, claiming that her removal would harm her daughter, which she was breastfeeding and undergoing seizures. But two days later, as Sanchez’s attorneys wanted a hearing in the case, she was already in the air in the deporting flight to Havana.
“In such cases (there are) very strong humanitarian factors and (Heidi) did not deserve to be removed the way it was,” Sanchez Claidia’s lawyer Kanizarez told CNN.
Cañizares said the way Sanchez was repeatedly moved from various ice facilities-which makes it impossible to see her client before the deportation of her fast song was “shady”.
Now every possible legal journey for Sanchez to return to the United States, it might have been years, Kanizares said. Sanchez and her family hope that the reverse reaction of her history can lead to sufficient public support-especially among the Cuban-American community, which supported Trump in the presidential race in 2024-to allow unification.
“The Trump Administration tears the families for political games,” US representative Katie Castor (D-Fl) published on X along with a photo of her meeting with Sanchez Carlos’s husband.
“We are pursuing every action to reunite this family and unfortunately we are still waiting for a response from the White House to explain their illegal actions,” she said.
Heidi Sanchez in Havana, Cuba. – Patrick Oppmann/CNN
As the controversy revolves around her case, Sanchez struggles to adapt to the terrible situation in Cuba, where daily interruptions of power supply and increase the shortage made life even more difficult on the island than she left six years ago.
She lives in a house with relatives where parts of the ceiling enter and the electricity is cut for hours every day. Acceptance of cells from a state supplier is so spots in the area that it either has to walk a few blocks, or scathing to the roof of the house to call his husband and daughter.
Her family is only on a 90-minute flight, but for the immediate future he remains agonizing out of reach.
“I have to pump milk that my daughter should feed and throw it into the bin,” Sanchez said. “It hurts me so much.”
She is constantly worried about her young daughter, who has sleep problems and has again undergone convulsions after her mother’s deportation.
“Her father puts records on me who sings to her so she can sleep,” Sanchez said. “I suffer, but I know my girl suffers more.”
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