Heidy Sánchez had so much to celebrate. She and her husband, Carlos Yuniel Valle, just bought a home three months ago.
They were raising their 1-year-old daughter and having family barbecues in the backyard.
Sánchez had a stable job as a home health aide, caring for the sick and the elderly. And Valle was doing well as a landscaping subcontractor.
There was one more thing the couple was working towards — getting Sánchez's green card.
Valle, a naturalized U.S. citizen who had immigrated from Cuba, submitted what's called a petition for an alien relative for Sánchez two years ago. It was the first step in helping Sánchez become a legal permanent resident.
Valle said he didn't have any doubts that would eventually come through. His wife didn't have so much as a traffic ticket on her record, he said.
But then they started hearing about people being detained at their immigration check-ins — people without criminal backgrounds.
Last Monday, Sánchez received multiple calls from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Tampa, Valle recounted through a translator.
They were telling her that her immigration appointment was being moved up from the end of the month to the next day.
Valle said they were conflicted about what to do, but ultimately wanted to "do things the right way." So the family, along with their immigration attorney's assistant, went to the Tampa ICE office on Tuesday.
"When will I see my daughter again? When will I be with my husband and my family again?"Heidy Sánchez
Sánchez, who spoke with WUSF over the phone, said she pleaded with the immigration officers not to separate her from her infant daughter.
"I told them, 'Please don't do this to me, please don't do this to me,' but they wouldn't listen," Sánchez said. "The attorney's assistant started crying with me, but she said, 'I'm so sorry, I can't do anything,'"
Sánchez said she left her daughter with Valle. She was then taken on a bus to Miami and put on a plane with 81 others to Cuba. According to a post on X from the Ministry of the Interior of Cuba, there were eight women and 74 men on the flight.
When she landed, Sánchez said she felt broken.
"I keep asking, 'When will I see my daughter again? When will I be with my husband and my family again?' Everything we've achieved together, everything we fought for and worked for," Sánchez said.
Valle said he and Sánchez's attorney tried everything possible to stop his wife's sudden deportation, including getting in touch with Tampa U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor.
Castor recently sent a letter to President Trump, urging that he grant humanitarian parole to Sánchez in order to bring her back.
The attorney, Claudia Cañizares, attempted to find Sánchez at the Miami International Airport. The ICE locator system had indicated that Sánchez was in the custody of Customs and Border Patrol. But their efforts were unsuccessful.
Cañizares told the Associated Press that she tried to file paperwork with ICE to contest the deportation Thursday morning, but ICE officials refused to accept it, saying Sánchez was already gone. Cañizares said she doesn’t think that was true.
Journey to the U.S.
Sánchez and her daughter Kailyn were inseparable, said Carmen Sánchez, Heidy Sánchez's aunt.
Kailyn was still breastfeeding before her mother was deported, Carmen said.
"She is extremely dependent on her mother," Carmen said. "She [Heidy Sánchez] would come home from work, go on walks with her every afternoon, bathe her. Her daughter was her life."
Sánchez's journey to the U.S. was complicated, Carmen said.
In 2019, Sánchez tried to claim asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. That year, the Trump administration implemented what was known as the "Remain in Mexico" policy, which required migrants to wait in Mexico for their immigration appointments, rather than in the U.S.
But because of gang violence, Sánchez was unable to make it to her appointment on time. When she finally returned to the border, agents told her a judge had already issued her deportation order for failing to appear at her hearing and detained her.
It was nearly impossible for people to win their asylum cases under the Remain in Mexico program because of extensive violence in border towns and the lack of access to legal representation, according to the American Immigration Council.
"I just think of the damage they are causing the baby. She stands by the window and says, 'Mama, mama,' wondering where her mother is."Carlos Yuniel Valle
For nine months, Sánchez was transferred between detention centers. Relatives in the U.S. didn't understand why she was being held for so long, Carmen said.
However, because Cuba was not accepting deportation flights of its nationals at the time, ICE eventually released Sánchez on certain conditions.
She was given a form called the I-220B Order of Supervision, which allowed her to stay and work in the U.S. But she still had an outstanding deportation order and had to check in periodically with U.S. immigration services.
Once she was released from detention, Sánchez started building a life. She studied and became a certified nursing assistant. She met Valle, fell in love and got married.
"She was a serious and focused woman," Valle said. "The opposite of who I was, and, therefore, made me a better person."
Sánchez eventually became pregnant with Kailyn through in vitro fertilization after being told by doctors in Cuba that she couldn't conceive.
"The baby slept on her chest every night," Valle said. "I just think of the damage they are causing the baby. She stands by the window and says, 'Mama, mama,' wondering where her mother is."
More immigrants are being detained
Since the Trump administration has ramped up deportation efforts, numerous accounts of immigrants being detained at their immigration check-ins have surfaced.
Under previous administrations, people like Sánchez, who have no criminal record, were a low priority for deportation.
Elizabeth Cannon, an immigration attorney based in Tampa, said it's evident that the Trump administration is not focused on deporting just criminals.
"Previous administrations have often been very good at removing criminals from the United States and then applying humanitarian decisions to people that deserve them," Cannon said. "What we're having now, again, is this no rhyme or reason, lack of discretion... It's terror tactics against immigrants. That's what it is."
Deportation numbers this year, however, are on track to be lower than the last year Biden was in office — 685,000.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told Reuters that Biden-era deportation numbers appeared "artificially high" because of higher levels of illegal immigration.
In a rush to meet its goal of one million deportations, critics of the Trump administration say they're violating due process rights and, in some cases, making mistakes.
Cannon says that while the Trump administration's tactics may cause some to "self-deport," not everyone has the means to do so.
"They have their whole lives built here, so that's not necessarily what's going to happen," she said. "They're just going to be living in terror.
"That's going to mean things like they're not going to schools, or they're not going to hospitals, then we have more people who perhaps are going to work with some kind of contagious disease that we don't want. It's not conducive to a functional society."
