A Provincetown man originally from Honduras was released from immigration detention at Logan Airport Thursday.
Carlos Maldonado Valle was held for 44 hours and threatened with deportation following a situation where his flight from Puerto Rico to Boston was rerouted to Bermuda.
CAI's Gilda Geist spoke with GBH News immigration reporter Sarah Betancourt to learn more.
Gilda Geist Walk us through the basics of what happened.
Sarah Betancourt So, there was this 21-year-old Provincetown student and employee of the local police department. He went to Puerto Rico for vacation, but he happened to be on the flight that several news outlets have reported on in the past few days, and it's that flight that had to stop at Bermuda because of a medical emergency of another person on the flight. And so, Carlos Maldonado Valle was on that flight, and because the flight stopped in Bermuda, when it returned to Logan Airport, it had to go through the international terminal and through customs. And when he went through customs, he was detained by Border Patrol.
GG And when he was detained, where was he taken?
SB He was just taken to another part of Terminal E. He described a cell to me. Maldonado Valle is originally from Honduras, but he does have legal protection to be in the United States through a Special Immigrant Juvenile visa. But that whole situation that I described to you earlier, with the domestic flight being an international one, is a huge deal because when you have that type of Special Immigrant Juvenile visa, you have to get permission to leave the country internationally, and there's a document for that. He didn't have that document because he went to Puerto Rico, a U.S. Territory, and he never planned to go to Bermuda. So, he got detained for about 44 hours at Logan Airport.
GG He has legal status and no known criminal record. He wasn't entering the country illegally or flying internationally on purpose. This was kind of a special situation. Did you hear from authorities at all about why he was detained and why for so long?
SB No, I did not hear from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, or Customs and Border Protection about it. They did release him very, very suddenly. And his attorney, Rachel Self, literally had to take an Uber over to Logan Airport as he was released. But as he was released, he had to pay to be paroled, which means released into the country, and that was $1,020.
GG You spoke to Maldonado Valle recently. How is he doing? What did he say about what it was like being held there?
SB Honestly, before we talked, he needed about an hour to decompress, call his mom. He was really shell-shocked. I mean, he came to the United States with his mom when he was 10. He has a Special Immigrant Juvenile visa, which is for immigrants who've dealt with abuse, neglect, or abandonment as children. He literally got that visa October 1 and now is on a path to a green card. And then on top of that, he's studying criminal justice and works at the local police department as a community service officer. His dream is to become a full-time police officer. So, this threw him off significantly. During our interview, he was struggling to talk about some of the situations. He described being put in a cell alone. He kept asking repeatedly to shower. He had constant panic attacks, and he had no phone. He had no way to really tell people he was there for quite some time, and he never got to talk to an attorney.
GG Some of the authorities who were in charge of him, they were threatening to deport him—is that right?
SB Yeah, he told me that when he was stopped at customs, he was asked, "are you a U.S. Citizen?" He said no. They asked for his ID. They asked him, "where are you from?" He said, "I'm from Honduras." And then that's when they pulled him aside and led him, he said, downstairs in Terminal E. And he was told by multiple, you know, sort of lower-level Border Patrol guys that, you're going to be sent back to Honduras. And that's what really spurred the nervous breakdowns, because he hasn't been there in a long time. He barely has any family there.
GG What happens next?
SB The $1,020 is paying to be let into the country, so he doesn't really have any legal issues around that at all. His usual immigration case continues. He's got the opportunity to apply for a green card now, but that was an existing situation before he was held at Logan Airport. The thing he really walks away with is pretty tremendous trauma from the situation. A lot of folks in Provincetown, including Town Manager Alex Morse and Police Chief Gregory Hennick, submitted letters supporting his release. And so, he just told me he's going to go home, he's going to thank everyone. He's so grateful, but it was quite a situation.
