Federal immigration officials ignored a unified plea from over 100 physicians and on Thursday deported Yoel Alonso Leal, an asylum-seeker suffering from a number of serious medical conditions including a lung tumor, back to Cuba.
Yoel’s advocates had warned that he was so fragile there was a chance that he wouldn’t survive the flight: a review of his medical records found “there is a tumor in his lung based on ‘radiographic findings significantly concerning for lung cancer.’” But Immigration and Customs Enforcement, repeatedly refused to release him to his U.S. citizen wife and family to pursue more tests and treatment.
The doctors said that his deportation would be “the latest in a series of harmful medical neglect and even malpractice in this case,” but advocates learned early Thursday that the mass deportation agency was preparing to deport him anyway, and launched an effort to try to pressure Delta into grounding the flight removing him from Atlanta to Cuba (while ICE will charter entire planes to deport people, some are also deported on commercial flights).
Instead, it appears that Yoel’s deportation may have been rushed: “records show the plane took off four minutes ahead of schedule,” Miami New Times reported. “The family of Leal had reported that ICE sometimes refused to tell them where he was being held during his captivity.”
ICE has with disturbingly high frequency been locking people up in more remote areas of the deep south, making it even more difficult to access legal help, especially low-cost or free services. In some cases, attorneys have trouble just locating their clients. Leal had been part of a successful lawsuit challenging ICE’s routine denial of parole to asylum-seekers, but Truthout reported that the day after that decision, ”Leal learned that he could soon be deported.”
On Thursday, that’s exactly what happened, and his wife and advocates fear for his safety in Cuba: “immigration documents provided by his lawyer show that Leal said he was detained and assaulted by Cuban authorities in 2016 and 2018 before seeking asylum in the U.S.,” The New York Times reported.