Cuban ICE detainee held so long his cellmates call him ‘abuelo’
After being released from a Florida prison after serving a 15-year sentence, Cuban national Heriberto Delvalle was taken into ICE custody and remains there 11 years later.
Heriberto Delvalle likens prison to purgatory with better food. One with fruit cups and chocolate milk.
The 70-yearold man born in Cuba has spent nearly half his life behind bars. Convicted of attempted murder after shooting the brother of a man he believed to be his wife’s lover, Delvalle served 15 years in a Florida prison. He was released only to be taken straight into custody by immigration officials.
That was more than 11 years ago.
Cuba won’t take him back, and for more than a decade the U.S. government has cited an exemption that allows them to hold “especially dangerous” people they consider a “threat
to the public.” Immigration policy experts and advocates say it’s just an extension of his already-served prison sentence and a major gap in U.S. immigration policy.
“This is purgatory,” he said during a video interview in the Krome detention center cafeteria in West Miami-Dade in June. “Though I already did my time, I will likely die in here.”
Delvalle’s story is rare. Many convicted immigrants finish their prison sentences and then immediately get transferred into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, but almost all of them are deported within months or a few years, depending on the country they’re from.
But among the factors sometimes prolonging Cuban detainees’ plight is that the island’s decision making on who it will take back can be arbitrary, experts say, especially with those who arrived in the U.S. decades ago and hold a criminal record. But even in those cases, ICE usually releases the detainees on an order of supervision, contingent on a safety evaluation, which Delvalle did not pass, ICE records show.
In an email, ICE cites federal regulations that say immigrants “who pose a threat to the public because they have committed a crime of violence, have a mental disorder and behavior associated with the disorder, and are likely to be violent in the future” are subject to “continued detention.”
“Detention under this authority is exceptionally rare, with only a handful of cases in existence,” ICE wrote in an email. “ICE has made repeated attempts to remove him from the U.S. or place him in an appropriate non-detained setting with security precautions particular to his needs.”
ICE would not specify what that setting would look like, though immigration experts say it would compare to an independent or assisted living facility. However, because those types of facilities for immigrants with significant criminal records don’t exist, Delvalle has been left riding out his senior years in custody.
“It’s a very sad story. There aren’t and haven’t been any alternatives for detention for someone like Delvalle, who struggles with mental illness,” said Juan Carlos Gomez, director of Florida International University’s immigration law clinic. Gomez served as one of Delvalle’s attorneys several years ago, and like a half dozen other lawyers, jumped off the case when there was no resolution in sight.
He added: “There’s just literally no place that would take him. What do you do with someone who needs quality mental health care, who cannot be deported but who also can’t be released into the public?”
Delvalle told the Miami Herald he’s now being represented by Sui Chung, an immigration lawyer based in South Florida. Chung said Delvalle is close to being released by ICE but declined to offer any details or discuss Delvalle’s case.
Obtained federal documents show Delvalle was diagnosed in March 2012 with Persecutory Type Delusional Disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). It’s unclear if his condition has changed; ICE declined to discuss Delvalle’s health condition.
People with that type of delusional disorder believe that they or someone close to them are being mistreated, or that someone is spying on them or planning to harm them. People with OCD struggle with unwanted obsessions, intrusive thoughts, images, or urges that trigger intensely distressing feelings, according to medical experts.
“According to the psychologist, you remain likely to engage in acts of violence in the future and there are no conditions that would ensure the safety of the public,” the ICE Miami Field Office wrote in a 2012 letter to Delvalle. “Based on your criminal history, ICE has determined that you are to remain in ICE custody at this time.”
But lawyers contend ICE isn’t prepared to handle a case like his either.
“Krome wasn’t meant to be a mental health institution, but that’s what it is, just without actual mental health help,” Gomez said. “And when you think about it, if he doesn’t die of old age, COVID is now a threat.”
In an interview with the Herald, Delvalle challenged his mental health diagnosis by ICE’s medical team, saying that he’s “only paranoid because of spending five and a half years in ICE isolation.”
“I’ve been here almost 12 years and was locked up in isolation for five and a half of those years with no explanation.
“I’m not shy to say I’m paranoid. Who wouldn’t be?” he said during the video interview. He grabbed a napkin and dabbed his teary eyes. “My theory — or what they are calling a ‘delusional’ — is that they are keeping me in here knowing that I could have been released a decade ago.”
In a letter to the Herald, Delvalle described his cell as constantly lit with bright lights during the entire span of the day, not allowing him to sleep: “That’s an emotional injury that is with me the rest of my life.”
ICE would not comment on Delvalle’s account of being placed in isolation, nor would the agency disclose the last time officials attempted to deport Delvalle or find alternative housing.
“Some guards refer to him as ‘Mr. Lonely,’” one of his Venezuelan cellmates said. “We call him the detention center ‘Abuelo.’
Chimed in another: “When I was at another detention center, before being transferred to Krome, I had heard about him, but I thought it was a myth.”
The Peruvian added: “It’s scary because we all think it could happen to us — that we would stay here forever. But we eventually trickle out. Not him.”
‘CRIME OF PASSION’ TURNS REFUGEE INTO CRIMINAL
Delvalle immigrated to Key West in May 1980 during the Mariel boatlift, during which 125,000 Cubans fled after Fidel Castro announced that anyone who wanted to flee could leave.
Most were law abiding. But the Cuban leader opened prison and mental institution doors, too, and within a few years, almost 3,000 of the refugees were in American jails after committing new crimes.
Delvalle, a telephone operator back in Cuba who took odd jobs after arriving in the U.S., wasn’t one of them — until 13 years later.
In January 1994, Delvalle was convicted of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm in Osceola County after he shot the brother of a man he believed to be his wife’s lover, Florida Department of Corrections records show.
The man who was shot in the head, then-23-year-old Simon Martinez, survived but suffered permanent brain damage, Delvalle said.
The shooting happened in 1993, when Delvalle was 43. He was arrested and booked without bail in the Osceola County Jail in Central Florida.
The event changed his life. It was about 8:30 p.m. on a Sunday outside Martinez’s home, where he, his 9-year-old stepson and a neighbor played basketball, according to a sheriff’s report.
“Delvalle believed that his wife, Lucy, was seeing Martinez’s brother, Fernando,” the report said. “The Martinezes told deputies they had received threatening telephone calls from a man they believed to be Delvalle.”
Fernando Martinez was indoors during the shooting and was not hurt. Delvalle said his memory of that day and why he shot at the man’s brother is blurry: “I just remember being in a rage outside the home.”
Simon Martinez’s stepson told deputies that he saw Delvalle drive up in a gray Ford Escort. He said Delvalle told his stepfather and a neighbor to get in the car, according to sheriff’s reports.
That’s when “the boy saw [Delvalle] brandish a silver pistol and fire once before the boy hid under a car in the driveway,” a report said, noting that neighbors of Martinez also heard shots and called 911 to report as many as six rounds of bullets being fired. Martinez was shot in the head and the neighbor in the left shoulder blade, a local newspaper report stated.
Lucy Delvalle, his ex-wife who has since died, told police Delvalle had been threatening her lately because they were getting divorced.
“I regret what I did. An innocent man didn’t get to live his life,” Delvalle said. “It’s shameful and an inexcusable crime of passion.”
He paused: “I hate to say this, but I served my time.”
MENTAL ILLNESS DIAGNOSIS THROWS INMATE INTO LIMBO
Criminal justice, immigration, and health experts agree, but emphasize that it’s complicated. FDLE records show Delvalle was released from prison on July 15, 2009, after serving a 15-year sentence. The same day, he was transferred to the Krome detention center in Miami.
Jordan Dollar — president of the board of directors of Catholic Legal Services in Miami, a group that for decades has represented Cuban immigrants in court — was Delvalle’s first attorney of record more than a decade ago.
Dollar, who at the time was focused on helping mentally ill detainees being housed at Krome, said he negotiated with the immigration court to have Delvalle released from ICE custody, contingent on finding “safe housing” where he could receive treatment.
“And that always was the issue. It’s all outrageous, but what is the alternative?” Dollar said. “Nobody agreed to accept Delvalle because of his criminal history and immigration status.”
He added: “His case has always bothered me, like am I the reason he’s still there?
“I view his life emblematic of the complete failure of society of dealing with people with mental illness. Think about it: After this long, with the federal government involved, who has all the resources in the world, how badly we fail the mentally ill as a society.”
But whether or not Delvalle is actually mentally ill, experts say, is up for debate. For years, lawyers on his case have wanted an independent assessment conducted, hoping that if Delvalle can be deemed not mentally ill, he can be released. ICE would not comment on Delvalle’s mental health. It’s unclear if an independent analysis has been conducted.
Eric Reinhart, a psychoanalyst at Harvard University’s medical school with an expertise on incarceration and health, says Delvalle’s delusional disorder diagnosis is “unusual” and “doesn’t necessarily mean that somebody is functionally or severely impaired or a threat to others.”
“That means someone has only delusions, they don’t also have what you would see in a schizophrenic, who for example, is somebody with disordered thoughts, hallucinations, or other psychiatric symptoms,” he said. “Often the delusions are fixed, it’s like one or two particular things that don’t accord with reality. It’s a bit of a contentious diagnosis. What may seem to be a delusion in one cultural context is not necessarily deemed to be a delusion in another.”
Reinhart has no connection to the case and reviewed federal case content provided by the Herald.
He added: “So if this man has been detained for 12 years, half of them in confinement, without a legal rationale that makes any sense to him, one might construct that as a particular kind of persecution and come up with a rationale for it that doesn’t make sense and could potentially be labeled as a delusional disorder.”
Reinhart noted that the diagnosis isn’t wrong necessarily, but that the merits of that diagnosis are important to ascertain.
“I wouldn’t necessarily take it at face value,” he said. “A lot of people have what I may call a delusion and they live quite well in communities, sometimes under psycho-therapeutic care, seeing a therapist every so often, or sometimes with no care at all.”
ICE would not discuss details about Delvalle’s diagnosis.
Nazgol Ghandnoosh, a senior research analyst at The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization engaged in research and advocacy for criminal justice, said people like Delvalle are unlikely to be repeat offenders.
“Research shows that people who commit what we call ‘crimes of passion,’ once they have some distance from the events that led to their crime, they mature, rehabilitate and are not likely to find themselves in that situation again,” Ghandnoosh said.
“Research suggests that after 10 years of engagement in criminal activity, people typically mature and phase out of a life of criminality. There’s also the physical tolls of aging — and he’s 70. This person’s offense was substantial. But in terms of what we think about as a society, when we talk about the elderly, they are much more unlikely to re-offend.”
But there’s one component of Delvalle’s situation that makes his outcome different from anyone else with his same criminal past and mental health diagnosis: his immigration status. Delvalle is not covered by any policy that protects Cubans due to his criminal conviction.
On Tuesday, the U.S. deported 48 Cuban nationals in its first removal flight since late February when the pandemic began, the agency told the Herald Wednesday. The flight from Louisiana comes two months after a Herald report detailed how ICE agents coerced some detainees — sometimes through physical violence — to sign a form saying they desired to return to Cuba to visit family.
Delvalle was not on the flight.
“If he were a U.S. citizen and weren’t entangled with ICE, he would be released on parole, take part in some outpatient visits, and a parole officer would keep track of his condition,” Ghandnoosh said. “The way the stars align for him are not the way they would align for anyone else who did the crime and served the time.”
DETENTION CENTER BECOMES ‘HOME’
Some call Delvalle a “myth,” others prefer the term “legend.”
“It’s either because they thought it would be impossible for someone to be locked up here this long or because they are shocked that I have survived this long,” Delvalle said as he snacked on some crackers.
“Either way, I’m here and it’s become my home.” He chuckled.
“I think I’m the only one in this hell facility that would dare to call a prison ‘home.’ “
And home it is.
It’s been years since the guards stopped making him go eat lunch or dinner with the others in the cafeteria.
“If he wants to go, he goes, if not, he stays and reads a book or watches TV or whatever,” one guard said on the condition of anonymity. “He just keeps to himself.”
And to himself he’s kept for almost three decades after his arrest in 1993. He never saw his two-year-old daughter again.
It wasn’t until 2015, that he made what he called his “first friend.”
Glenn Hutchinson, the director of the Center for Excellence in Writing at Florida International University, became Delvalle’s pen pal when students and faculty began visiting Krome.
“One letter turned into five, and five turned into hundreds,” Hutchinson said, pointing at the piles of correspondence. “We’re friends. He tells me about his days and I tell him about mine. We’re there for each other. The only thing I couldn’t help him with is finding his daughter. Lots of people have tried but nothing has ever come of it.”
Delvalle is described by Hutchinson and fellow detainees as “compassionate and caring.” Others call the skinny white-haired man sporting petite wireframed glasses a rebel of sorts.
“He was concerned about me when the pandemic occurred,” Hutchinson said. “He urged me to be careful. I thought that was a meaningful detail, considering all that he has gone through and is going through. He’s also bold and not afraid to speak up.”
As part of the reporting for this story, Delvalle’s daughter, Barbara Delvalle, was tracked down by the Herald using publicly available databases. Now living in Chicago with a toddler of her own, she said she had no idea her father was still in the country or even alive.
In a bellowing cry, she asked the reporter for her father’s contact information, and proceeded to write him a letter.
“Father, I don’t know where to begin,” she started off the letter. “I’m 29 years old now and live in Chicago with my 3-yearold daughter. Her name is Aiva (pronounced Ava).”
“I would like to maybe come see you, if possible,” she continued. “You are not alone. We want to get to know you.”
The aging inmate keeps the letters in a bag in his cell.
“I’m the giddiest man in the world,” he said, smiling ear to ear. “I can die happy now.”