Cuban Faces Deportation after 20 years in Jail for Hijacking
Adermis Wilson Gonzales may seek asylum in Mexico, in order to avoid reprisals in his country of origin.
HAVANA TIMES – For the second time in 22 years, Adermis Wilson Gonzales confronts the possibility of being sent back to Cuba. The 56-year-old Cuban was the protagonist of a memorable escape from Cuba, when he hijacked an Antonoy 24 airplane from the Cubana Airlines company, with a full load of passengers aboard, a crime that led to his trial and guilty verdict in the United States. Twenty-two years later, on June 29, Wilson Gonzalez was detained at his Houston home during an ICE operation.
“We’re desperate, and we don’t understand anything of what’s happened,” his sister Yolaine Wilson told the independent news site CafeFuerte. She was the one who received the one allowed phone call from her brother at the detention center where he was being held, just before the ICE agents took away his telephone. “My brother turned himself in peacefully, amid a large operation to capture him,” Yolaine declared. “Adermis can’t go back to Cuba, and the US authorities themselves know that.”
Many still remember the commotion around Adermis Wilson’s exploit, when he hijacked an airplane – grenade in hand – with the intention of forcing the pilot to take him to Miami. However, the plane, which had departed from Cuba’s Isle of Youth, wasn’t carrying enough fuel to make it to the other side of the Florida Straits. The pilot had to make an emergency landing at the Jose Marti International Airport in Havana, followed by a 14-hour negotiation to find a way out. Eventually, 22 passengers were allowed to deboard, and on April 1, 2003, the airplane flew to Key West, Florida, with 25 passengers and 6 crew members, escorted by US fighter jets.
In September 2003, Adermis was found guilty of air piracy in a US court and sentenced to nearly 20 years in jail. Prison offered him an opportunity to grow. He learned English and furthered his studies. In Cuba he had worked in civil construction on the Isle of Youth, but in 2013, he earned a civil engineering degree in prison from the University of Pennsylvania. He later completed a Master’s in Logistics from the University of North Carolina. When he was finally released from prison in 2021, he told the Cibercuba website: “I don’t want to die without first doing something positive for my country. I have plans to help the people on the Isle of Youth, and I hope to be able to make that real soon through some project.
Once out of prison, Adermis Wilson still lacked legal status in the US and faced a process of deportation. His lawyer insisted that it was essential for humanitarian reasons that he be allowed to remain in the country, as he’d been suffering since 2017 from paralysis of the legs, hypertension, and heart problems. “Adermis no longer represents, nor is he able to represent, a threat to any community,” the attorneys argued.
While his case was proceeding through the courts, Adermis was held at a Georgia detention center. There, the Freedom for Immigrants organization also intervened in his case and filed an emergency petition to guarantee him better medical attention and nutrition.
Finally, after five months in immigration detention, Wilson was approved to remain in Houston. “I have nothing to reproach the US government for, because I don’t think their punishment was unjust. I committed a crime, they found me guilty of breaking the laws, and I served my time right up to the last day, with respect for this country,” he stated at the time. He added: “For the first time since I was born, I’m a free person, because in Cuba I was never free.”
His current detention has surprised the Cuban diaspora community, fearful of what could happen to him due to his status as an ex-convict.
His sister told CafeFuerte that during the call he made, she heard from the official that there was a possibility he would end up in Mexico, as an alternative to being sent back to Cuba. This occurred recently with a dozen Cubans.
However, concern is growing after Isidro Perez, a 75-year-old Cuban, died in ICE custody. Perez, who had lived in the United States since 1965, was detained in Florida on June 5. He was pronounced dead on June 26th by the HCA Hospital in Kendall, Florida.
In a statement, ICE recognized this fact and asserted that Perez was detained in Key Largo on June 5 and accused of “inadmissibility pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act.” The Cuban was taken to the Krome Processing Center the next day, where he was diagnosed with a number of medical problems. On June 26 there, he complained of chest pains, a frequent symptom of the heart problem that apparently caused his death.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.