Tampa woman deported to Cuba gets separated from one-year-old and U.S. citizen husband

A Cuban woman living in Tampa who came to the United States in 2019 and is married to a U.S. citizen was abruptly detained by immigration authorities and deported to Cuba on Thursday, leaving behind her one-year-old child.

Heidy Sánchez, 44, a Hillsborough County resident, was among 82 Cuban migrants sent on a plane from Miami back to Cuba on Thursday morning, her husband, Carlos Yuniel Valle, told the Miami Herald. Her deportation has been so sudden and traumatic for their infant daughter, still breastfeeding and with ongoing health issues, that her grandmother was taking her to the hospital, he said in a phone interview on Friday.

“The baby is distressed and does not want to eat,” Valle said. “Imagine, they ripped the child from her mother’s arms at the immigration office; the cries of that woman in there could be heard back in Cuba,” he said, speaking of his wife’s desperation at being separated from her daughter.

Sánchez was still wearing clothing from the detention center when her husband saw her on a video call on Thursday from where she is staying in Havana. Her abrupt return to the island is coming at a time Cubans are dealing with severe shortages of food and necessities and electrical blackouts that may extend for several days. And she doesn’t have a home there.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tampa-woman-deported-cuba-gets-093000160.html