Among detainees at Eloy Detention Center, 79-year-old Julia Benitez is known as "la abuela," the grandmother in Spanish.
Cuban asylum seeker Julia Benitez is pictured last year in Mexico, then 78 years old, two days before crossing the U.S.-Mexico border near Lukeville, Arizona to surrender to border agents and request asylum. Benitez was released Thursday night after nine months in immigration detention in Eloy. Â
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Julia Benitez is pictured in 2022 with her two grandsons, then 16 and 7 years old, when they lived together in Cuba. Her daughter Dayana said she tries to reassure her mother during her immigration detention through daily video calls. "I talk to her about everyday life to help her not to lose context," Dayana said. "I say, 'Don't worry, you'll get out soon. You'll hug your grandchildren, you'll kiss them because we're waiting for you here.' And she gets emotional, and I see tears in her eyes."
Julia Benitez is pictured in 2022 with her daughter, Dayana Cosme Benitez, in Cuba. Dayana said growing up, her mother Julia was gentle and protective, sewing her daughter new dresses for her birthdays and getting involved in her daughter’s school and church activities. "She always cheerful. Even if she had a problem, she never showed it," Dayana recalled. Julia was a devoted grandmother, helping to raise her two grandsons, who are now 20 and 11, Dayana said. "When I had my children, she was an unconditional grandmother. She loves her grandchildren madly, with devotion. She helped me raise them. She worried about everything."
Julia Benitez, now 79, is pictured with her daughter Dayana and two grandsons in 2022, at a church in Cuba.
Julia Benitez's late husband, Daniel Cosme Ramos, pictured here, was killed at age 46 by Cuban border guards in 1991, as he tried to flee the country, according to an entry in the archive site Cuba Archive. Julia Benitez's asylum petition said she and her daughter Dayana, who was 12 when her father was killed, have been harassed and persecuted by the government since the public condemnations of her father's killing. The archive classified his death as an enforced disappearance. Archive co-founder Maria Werlau said she interviewed the mother of another man who was killed along with Cosme Ramos. The victims' families spent five years searching for their disappeared relatives, until one day, a member of the border guard, who was a distant relative of one of the families, said, "Stop looking. They were caught trying to flee and were shot," Werlau recalled to the Star.Â
Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team reporter Emily Hamer contributed data analysis and online graphics to this report.
Contact reporter Emily Bregel at ebregel@tucson.com. On X, formerly Twitter: @EmilyBregel
