ICE Transfers Venezuelan Barber to Guantánamo (SCOOP)
Another Latino with no criminal record (but four tattoos) gets disappeared offshore by the Trump administration.
Yoiker David Sequera, 25, has been cutting hair since he was a child. His uncle, a master barber in Venezuela, taught him the trade from an early age.
“Even as a baby, just being in the barbershop with his uncle made him so happy,” a relative said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Yoiker would watch him cut hair with wide eyes, listening carefully to everything his uncle told him.”
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By the time he dropped out of school at 13, Sequera had memorized the Bible and began an apprenticeship at his uncle’s barbershop in Estado Miranda, Venezuela. As his reputation as a barber grew, so did the economic and political crisis in Venezuela. He fled in 2022, seeking asylum in the United States.
Journey to the U.S.
Sequera carried his barber kit through the Darién Gap, cutting hair along the way from Panama to Mexico City to fund his journey, according to fellow asylum seekers who traveled with him. Social media images show him advertising his barber services across Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, and the U.S.
In July 2022, he crossed the Rio Grande and surrendered to U.S. border agents, requesting asylum. A relative said he delayed crossing to save money by working in Mexico. “Yoiker doesn’t believe in government handouts or taking charity if he can work instead,” the relative said.
U.S. authorities issued Sequera a case number and ordered him to appear in immigration court in New York City on Nov. 8, 2022. He attended the hearing and was told to wait for further instructions by mail. Meanwhile, he secured a job at a barbershop in California. Documents reviewed by Migrant Insider indicate that he had no criminal record in Venezuela or other Latin American countries.
A Fateful Decision
In May 2023, Sequera returned to Venezuela to check on a property he was leasing to a caretaker. Upon arrival, he found the property inaccessible, the caretaker missing, and no legal means to reenter the U.S., where he had been living and working.
VIDEO: Sequera cutting hair in Costa Rica in 2023 or ‘24
His asylum case remained pending, along with millions of others. Though the Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelans, Sequera’s return trip made him ineligible.
Scams and a Second Attempt
Sequera’s family said he fell victim to two scams. First, a Venezuelan man in Chicago named Ramos allegedly promised to resolve his immigration status for a fee. Sequera’s family provided receipts showing hundreds of dollars wired to Ramos, but no help materialized.
The second scam, they said, involved a lawyer, Simon Audrey Lynn, from the Vernal Law Firm in Portland, Oregon. According to a document obtained by Migrant Insider, the firm required periodic payments “depending on the progress of the process.” Sequera’s family paid $6,000 but saw little progress. A relative later filed a complaint with the Department of Justice.
By the end of 2023, Sequera had fled Venezuela again, traversed the Darién Gap a second time, and worked as a barber in Ecuador to save money for his return to the U.S. In Mexico City, he applied for an appointment through the now-defunct CBP One app, but no appointment was granted.
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On Sept. 12, 2024, he crossed the Rio Grande again and surrendered to U.S. border agents. This time, as a repeat entrant, he was detained at the El Paso Processing Center, where he cut the hair of fellow detainees.
Transfer to Guantánamo Bay
Sequera called his family daily from detention until Feb. 8. By December, he was considering voluntary deportation to Mexico, unwilling to remain detained indefinitely.
On Sunday, he was transferred without warning to the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay. His family, like those of nearly a dozen other detainees contacted by Migrant Insider, has not heard from him since. They have, however, been contacted by attorneys, including those from the ACLU, offering legal assistance.
“Mi hijo no es delincuente,” a family member said, hesitant to accept legal help after their experience with the Vernal Law Firm. “I have all the evidence to prove it. All they have are his tattoos—a pair of scissors on his left arm, a turtle, a tiny crown with ‘David’—his middle name, meaning ‘King David’ in the Bible, not a gang affiliation.”
On Monday, Sequera’s official location was updated in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainee locator system, shifting from El Paso to Miami’s ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) field office. Former Department of Homeland Security officials told Migrant Insider that the update likely resulted from a system oversight, as Guantánamo Bay is not yet coded into the system.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This is a developing story.
EDITOR’S NOTE: On Tuesday afternoon, The New York Times republished our scoop from Sunday without attributing us, effectively stealing our work. So today, we put (SCOOP) in our headline—not to be insensitive to the sources we covered in this morning’s news story about a serious topic, but to make it even clearer that we had this story first.
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