Yasmany Moreno figured it was another transfer between detention facilities, one more stop in a stretch of federal custody that had already run past a year. Instead, when his flight lifted off from Texas before dawn on July 30, an immigration officer waited nearly five hours to tell him where the plane was actually headed: the Central African Republic, a nation Moreno says he had never once heard mentioned before that moment, according to reporting from the Tampa Bay Times, which interviewed Moreno directly from Bangui.
Thirty-six deportees, including several Cuban nationals, made the roughly 21-hour trip together, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles for the duration. A month later, Moreno remains in Bangui with no passport, no legal footing and no clear sense of what happens next.
