Cuban Political Prisoner Faces Deportation as Trump Ends Humanitarian Parole Program

Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca stepped off a plane in Pennsylvania last June as a free man, though not by choice. The Cuban journalist had been carried from a maximum-security prison in Havana on a stretcher, skeletal from three years of confinement, his wife Eralidis beside him as Cuban agents watched their every movement. They were beneficiaries of Joe Biden's humanitarian parole program—a legal pathway that had allowed nearly 111,000 Cubans to leave the island since early 2023. Valle was not like the others. He left as a political prisoner, an opponent of the regime, a man the government had threatened with death if he did not disappear.

In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Valle has been slowly recovering. He has gained back nearly thirty pounds lost in prison. He is learning to live with the cold he dislikes, adjusting to a place where he can move without surveillance, where he can speak without fear. "You have to start adapting, because it's a hard life, but I like it because I have freedom," he said in recent days. He was beginning to build something resembling normalcy when an email arrived—the same message sent to thousands of Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and Haitians. The Trump administration had terminated the humanitarian parole program. He had until April 24 to leave the United States or become undocumented, stripped of work authorization, vulnerable to deportation.

Valle's path to this moment began long before his imprisonment. He is the grandson of Blas Roca Calderío, a high-ranking figure in Cuba's revolutionary government from 1959 onward. As a child, Valle watched the machinery of power operate from inside the system. He chose a different course. As an adult, he became what the regime calls a gusano—a worm, a dissident. He worked as an independent journalist and activist, documenting the work of the Damas de Blanco, the mothers and wives of political prisoners. He was beaten by police for his reporting. He was detained and fined. On June 14, 2021, standing on a balcony in Centro Habana, he filmed as hundreds of leaflets bearing quotes from national heroes José Martí and Antonio Maceo rained down on passersby. He uploaded the video to YouTube. Hours later, he was arrested.

What followed was worse. When unprecedented anti-government protests erupted across Cuba on July 11, 2021—protests that would produce more than 1,500 political prisoners—authorities accused Valle of inciting the uprising. They sought to sentence him to thirty years, claiming he was a ringleader, an agitator, guilty of sedition. During his three years in prison, international organizations documented his mistreatment. He lost vision in his eyes. His kidneys failed. A beating by guards left his septum deviated. He developed chronic bronchopneumonia. Medical care was nearly nonexistent. His wife fought to secure his release through the parole program, finding a family member to sponsor them. In June 2024, after serving his sentence, Valle was released.

Now, facing the April 24 deadline, Valle is applying for political asylum. He does not feel the fear that grips many undocumented immigrants—the fear of leaving home, of going to work, of seeking medical care. "What fear am I going to have if I faced a monster and excessive repression there?" he asked. But the stakes are clear. Raudiel Peña Barrios, a Cuban lawyer with the legal advisory group Cubalex, warned that deportation would place Valle at extreme risk of re-imprisonment given his history as an independent journalist and activist. The Committee to Protect Journalists has asked U.S. authorities to rescind the deportation order. The Cuban Prisoners' Documentation Center has sounded an alarm. International human rights organizations have called for solidarity, demanding that Valle and others like him be granted asylum protection.

Valle has said his fight belongs in Cuba. But for now, he prefers to remain where he can breathe. He has made a promise to himself: if Trump's government deports him and he lands again in Havana, he will not enter quietly. "I'm going to enter shouting Down with Miguel Díaz-Canel and Long Live Free Cuba," he said. "I'm not going to enter like a meek dove. I'm going to keep fighting." The question now is whether the American government will allow him to make that choice, or whether it will send him back to the place from which he was practically expelled, back to the cell, back to the men who beat him, back to the regime that nearly killed him.