Antonio Frometa Ascón has yet to hold his first granddaughter, who was born last month as he marked a year in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention.
“No la he podido conocer o abrazarla. Yo debo estar con ellos y no encerrado aquí,” he said recently from behind a plexiglass window at the ICE El Paso Service Processing Center. “I haven’t been able to meet her or hug her. I should be with them and not locked up in here.”
A Cuban who came to the United States in 1994 and was later granted parole, Frometa has been in ICE custody since Aug. 14, 2025 – raising questions about whether the federal government is violating his due process rights and testing a 2001 landmark Supreme Court ruling that immigration detention cannot be indefinite for people who essentially can’t be deported.
In that case, Zadvydas v. Davis, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of two immigrant detainees with final deportation orders who challenged their prolonged detention after their home countries would not accept them.
The ruling set two precedents: First, it established that ICE cannot detain an immigrant with final removal orders for longer than the “presumptively reasonable” period of six months. Second, it prohibited indefinite detention by stating that, if after six months, there was no significant likelihood of deportation in the foreseeable future, the government must generally release the person under supervision.
“I would love to see the language in the Zadvydas case heartily reaffirmed – that people cannot be detained indefinitely if a lawful removal is not reasonably foreseeable,” said Gracie Willis, a rapid response coordinating attorney with the National Immigration Project. The nonprofit legal advocacy organization works to defend the rights of immigrants in the United States.
“I’d love to see us just reaffirming our commitment to those protected values, as well as reaffirming our commitment to due process overall,” Willis said.
In an email statement to El Paso Matters, the Department of Homeland Security said “the Trump Administration is utilizing all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history, just as President Trump promised.”
‘Please release me’
Frometa’s case is complicated by several factors.
The 63-year-old was a witness to a detainee death at Camp East Montana earlier this year, after which the federal government served him with a notice of removal to Mexico – which requires consent of a deportee from a third country. Frometa would not agree. And because the detainee’s death was the subject of a lawsuit, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the government prohibiting DHS from removing Frometa from the country.
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The restraining order became moot after Frometa was no longer needed as a witness.
But Frometa has refused to be deported to Mexico. He fears extortion and violence from the cartels which Human Rights Watch reports often target Cuban and other third-country nationals deported from the United States.
In November 2025, months before the death in Camp East Montana, ICE attempted to remove him to Cuba, but the country refused him. Cuba has refused to accept certain deportees, especially those such as Frometa who left the island many years ago or have criminal convictions.
Frometa was sentenced to five years probation in 2002 for a felony conviction of battery on a person older than 65 in Palm Beach, Florida. Because he didn’t show up for a removal hearing in October 2008, he was issued the deportation order in absentia.
In its statement, DHS cited Frometa’s criminal history and the deportation order, saying “he will remain in ICE custody pending removal.”
Wearing red scrubs, black slip-on shoes and a detainee identification bracelet, Frometa from detention talked openly about his arrest, saying he owns up to his “mistake.” But, he argues, his conviction was more than 20 years ago and he has completed his punishment.
“I understand I did not fully comply with the law in the past when I got sentenced to four years probation and successfully completed the program,” he said in a March 2026 handwritten habeas corpus petition challenging his detention without bond. He filed the petition pro se, meaning he was representing himself because he didn’t have an attorney at the time.
“I ask for an opportunity to reunite myself with my family and establish a positive relationship. I have never been to prison. I’m not a threat or flight risk to others because I have never done anything that shows I am.”
On March 5, U.S. District Judge Leon Schydlower of El Paso issued a show cause order to the federal government, which responded by saying that ICE has the discretion to hold immigrants with orders of removal beyond 90 days even if the government doesn’t have a country that will accept them.
Schydlower, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2024, has been far more reluctant than the other three El Paso federal judges to grant habeas corpus petitions to detained migrants, an El Paso matters review of the petitions has shown.
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In its court filing, DHS said that under what is known as the Zadvydas precedent, Frometa must provide “good reason” to believe there is no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future, and he hadn’t met that burden.
Attorney Frederic Goodwill II of Illinois, who began representing Frometa in April, in court documents argues that the Zadvydas precedent means his client should be freed because the government hasn’t shown that it has a country willing to accept him as a deportee.
In a July response to an amended petition by Frometa’s attorney, the government said that it “continues to evaluate removal to Cuba, Mexico or other countries.” An affidavit from a deportation officer says the “anticipated timeline to remove petitioner is currently unknown.”
Willis, of the National Immigration Project, said she questions the legality of third-country removals – those where the immigrant is deported to a country other than their home country. She said she believes the definition of a “lawful removal” should be “very strongly protective” of immigrants’ rights and safety.
“That question that’s implicit in this is: Is there a significant likelihood of a lawful removal in the reasonably foreseeable future? Not just a removal that the government makes happen because they ignored the Constitution.”
The most recent addition to Frometa’s federal court file is a handwritten note from him in English, dated Aug. 14, that was entered in the federal court system Sept. 17.
“I’m not a threat or flight risk to others because I have never done anything that shows I am, and being deported to Mexico or any other country I would fear persecution in regards to never being there and I would feel like a stranger,” he wrote.
“I seek a constitutionally adequate hearing to be conducted in which I can explain my state of position in way I could not before, and I don’t want to go to Mexico as an illegal alien cause ICE is not giving us no type of status in Mexico. I have 1 years and 15 days detention. I appreciate your time and God bless. Please released me please,” Frometa concluded his letter.
Cuba to Guantanamo, Alligator Alcatraz to Camp East Montana
Months after filing the petition, Frometa’s case remains stalled as his health gradually declines.
“Quiero que todos vean mi caso, que sepan porque estoy aquí,” he told El Paso Matters through the handset at the processing center visitation stall. “I want everyone to know about my case, that they understand why I’m here.”
Despite having slightly slurred speech because he’s missing several teeth, Frometa spoke with assurance about his ordeal as his slender frame leaned into the window.
Frometa came to the United States in 1994 as part of the massive maritime exodus of Cubans fleeing economic hardship and political turmoil under the Fidel Castro regime. He left behind his parents, siblings and a daughter. He spent time in Guantánamo Bay, the U.S. Navy base where thousands of refugees were held before being paroled into the United States.
Over the next 30 years, he built a life in Florida, where he remained lawfully and held a work permit and Social Security number. He worked six days a week trimming trees, raised two sons, now 26 and 28, made friends and started new relationships.
On his way to work in West Palm Beach on Aug. 14, 2025, he was stopped by the Florida Highway Patrol under Operation Tidal Wave, a statewide immigration crackdown involving local and state law enforcement agencies. He was turned over to ICE and placed in the South Florida Detention Facility, also known as Alligator Alcatraz. He alleges he was left deaf in his right ear after a guard there hit him on the side of his head for speaking out when a guard choked another detainee.
A week later, Frometa was transferred to ERO El Paso Camp East Montana – the largest ICE detention center in the nation that had just opened under the Trump administration’s mass detention and deportation agenda.
He remained locked up as allegations of mistreatment and assault on detainees at the detention facility mounted.
Witness to ICE detention death
Frometa said he witnessed the death of fellow detainee Geraldo Lunas Campos – a 55-year-old Cuban immigrant he had spent time with at Guantanamo. He considered him a friend, Frometa said.
Following months of pleading for his medication and reported suicide attempts, Campos on Saturday, Jan. 3, had an altercation with the guards at Camp East Montana who threatened to put him in isolation.
Campos, who was asthmatic and used an inhaler, suffered from bipolar disorder and anxiety, according to the autopsy report. The El Paso County Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide, citing the cause of death as asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.
DHS has maintained Lunas Campos was attempting to take his own life and in its statement to El Paso Matters again said he “violently resisted” staff trying to ”intervene to save his life.”
The U.S. Government Accountability Office in a June report about issues at Camp East Montana noted that while ICE filed a “discrepancy report” on the contractor related to the death, the contractor at the time did not provide use of force and death reports to ICE as required. Further, “evidence associated with the incident was missing or destroyed,” the GAO said in its report.
Frometa told El Paso Matters he saw the guards assault Campos, who begged for his asthma medicine as they beat him.
“They handcuffed him and I saw that they were hitting him as they took him away,” he said in Spanish. Campos didn’t return to his quarters that day or the next morning.
Concerned, Frometa the following day called Campos’ wife, who told him he had died.
Frometa had a different perspective, he said.
“Lo asesinarón, no hay otra manera de decirlo,” he said, his blue eyes unyielding, the pronounced wrinkles on his face becoming deeper. “They assassinated him, there’s no other way to say it.”
No one has been charged in connection with Campos’ death.
Frometa was later transferred to the ICE processing center near El Paso International Airport, which has also been subject to allegations of widespread human rights violations, including by a 2025 Amnesty International report.
‘They can’t keep me locked up forever’
Behind the plexiglass, Frometa shakes his head and throws his arms up.
“I don’t know what else to do,” he said in Spanish. “I just want to go back to my family. They can’t keep me locked up forever.”
In court documents, his son Marc Frometa said that due to the conditions in Cuba, his father has “faced significant hardships that have affected his safety, stability and opportunities. His intention in seeking immigration relief in the United States is to live free from fear, support his family and continue contributing as a productive and law-abiding resident.”
His partner, who asked her name not be used in fear of retaliation by immigration enforcement officials, said the two met through friends in 2020 and quickly became a couple.
“Es una persona muy especial, trabajador y dedicado a la familia,” the woman told El Paso Matters in a text exchange. “He’s a very special person, hard-working and dedicated to his family.”
Life hasn’t been the same without him, she said, noting his energy in gatherings with friends and family is greatly missed.
“Ahora naturalmente está desesperado y muy deprimido pues no tiene respuesta de los trámites que ha realizado el abogado,” she said. “Naturally, now he’s desperate and very depressed as he has received no response to all the filings from his attorney.”
Frometa said he’s lost weight because he can’t eat a lot of the food they serve because of his missing teeth. He feels weak at times, he said, and suffers headaches and ringing in his ears.
Mostly, he said, he’s frustrated that his case is going nowhere when “worse offenders” have been released, some with ankle monitors.
If he has to be deported he’d rather return to Cuba to be with family he hasn’t seen in 30 years. But if he must remain locked up, he’d at least ask to be transferred to Florida where his family can visit, he said.
Maybe there, he said, he could meet his granddaughter – even if only through a murky plexiglass window.
The post A year in ICE detention: Cuban man’s case tests Supreme Court detention ruling appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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