The United States immigration authorities detained a Venezuelan immigrant at the Fort Lauderdale (Florida) airport who has a current asylum application, following the end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuela.
The arrest of Claudia Carolina Rodríguez Caglianone, former captain of a Miami college soccer team, occurs amid the new effort to detain migrants at airports and the expiration of TPS for Venezuelans, Haitians and other nationalities.
This arrest sparked a campaign by family members and Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who seek to free her from the ICE detention center located in Pompano Beach.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Rodríguez Caglianone, 28, when he passed through security at the Fort Lauderdale airport to go see the World Cup final with his friends in North Carolina, according to his family.
The young woman, who graduated from St. Thomas University in Miami and was captain of the soccer team there, arrived legally from Venezuela to the United States in 2017 with a tourist visa, then requested asylum and received TPS in 2023, Wasserman Schultz said in a press conference outside the detention center in Pompano Beach.
Her arrest, the legislator noted, is a consequence of the end of TPS requested by President Donald Trump and the increasing ICE arrests at airports of migrants with pending asylum applications, expired visas or immigration status adjustments in process, as reported by the media and civil groups this week.
“Right now, ICE agents are invading airports to catch law-abiding residents like Claudia, disrupting lives, wasting taxpayer money, and betraying American values,” Wasserman Schultz stated.
Her family reports that they first took the young woman to the ICE detention center in Miramar, in the Miami metropolitan area, and then to Pompano Beach, and there have been periods in which they cannot communicate with her.
In this context, a request for help has begun in GoFundMein which they have raised funds to hire an immigration lawyer in Miami.
«Claudia is a hard-working, noble and big-hearted person. For me and everyone who knows her, she means a lot. Seeing someone you love go through such a difficult situation is heartbreaking,” wrote her cousin Ruth Lares-Caglianone on the platform.
The event occurs amid record arrests of migrants in the United States, with more than 43,000 detained by ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CPB) last June, the highest number since the beginning of Trump’s second term.
