Two teen mariachi musicians and their family members have been released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in the wake of massive backlash over their detention, Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) and Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas) announced Monday.
Antonio and Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar are members of Mariachi Oro, an award-winning high school mariachi group from McAllen, Texas, that previously performed on Capitol Hill and visited the White House. The two brothers were detained on February 25 along with their parents, Luis Antonio Martínez and Emma Guadalupe Cuéllar, as well as their younger brother Joshua.
In a statement about their detention, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that the family had entered the U.S. illegally and was released into the country by the Biden administration.
Martínez told The New York Times that the family filed an asylum claim in the U.S. after fleeing violence in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, where he was previously kidnapped by members of a cartel. He said that the family had attended all required court dates and check-ins with immigration authorities. According to Martínez, they were notified about an ICE check-in in February and were subsequently detained at that meeting.
Caleb, 14, and Joshua, 12, were held at a detention center in Dilley, Texas, where children are kept with their guardians. Antonio, 18, was detained separately at El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas, due to ICE policies barring adult males without children from being held at Dilley.
“I told them, he is a child,” Martínez told The Times about the separation. “He was in tears when they took him away in shackles.”
The brothers’ detention has sparked major outcry and scrutiny of the circumstances surrounding their case.
“How is it that these two young men were good enough to perform at the United States Capitol at the invitation of their congresswoman, they were safe enough to tour the White House, and yet the Trump administration has them sitting in a prison?” Castro asked in a social media video on Saturday.
All five members of the Gámez-Cuéllar family were released on Monday following pressure from Democratic and Republican lawmakers as well as the broader public.
De La Cruz, the lawmaker who invited the brothers’ group to perform on Capitol Hill, said Saturday that she was exploring legal options to assist the Gámez-Cuéllar family.
De La Cruz has faced backlash for her support of Trump, who has prioritized mass deportations of immigrants in his second term. And Democratic lawmakers told The New York Times that family members were frustrated that De La Cruz didn’t seem to take an interest until external pressure had increased.
“I was honored to stand with Antonio and his fellow mariachis when they visited my office last year, and I am honored to stand with him again,” De La Cruz said in a statement following Antonio Gámez-Cuéllar’s release. “While some were busy politicizing this family’s situation, I was busy solving it.”
A spokesperson for De La Cruz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Castro noted that the brothers’ case underscored the brutal nature of the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement efforts and continued to raise questions about who the feds were targeting.
“The Gámez-Cuéllar family should never have been sitting in the Dilley trailer prison,” Castro said during a press briefing on Monday. “Their story underlies the cruelty, irony and hypocrisy of the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy.”
