A 27-year-old Venezuelan singer was kept in detention after being granted asylum, in circumstances eerily similar to his own music video.
“I just didn’t understand and thought, ‘What more can they want with me if I already won my case?’” Claudio David Balcane González, known as Davicito59, told The Washington Post.
Balcane arrived in the U.S. in April 2024. He presented himself at the U.S.-Mexico border for an appointment scheduled through the CBP One app, which was expanded under President Joe Biden to allow migrants without entry documents to book appointments with CBP officials, who then inspected them and granted access to the asylum process.
The Venezuelan singer stated that he was questioned about his tattoos, but was still allowed entry into the country.
A year later ICE officers detained him in Chicago.
“I tried telling them I was a singer,” Balcane told the Post when recalling that a black van swerved in front of him when he was heading to the music studio.
Balcane recounted that eight plain-clothed agents surrounded his vehicle with guns and questioned him about his tattoos. He said they later played his music video and made fun of him.
In February, two months before his detention, Balcane was one of three Venezuelan rappers featured in a song pleading with President Donald Trump not to deport them.
“Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump—say yes to immigrants and no to deportation. Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump—I just want a chance to stay. I’m out here chasing the bag,” Balcane sings in the song.
When contacted by the Daily Beast, the Department of Homeland Security stated that the singer was detained because he was an “illegal alien and public safety threat with ties to Tren de Aragua,” and that “any assertions that Claudio David Balcane Gonzalez was targeted because of a TikTok video, a song, or any attempted clickbait are false.”
In March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act and declared that the Tren de Aragua gang carries out “mass illegal migration to the United States to further its objectives of harming U.S. citizens” and is closely aligned with the Venezuelan regime.
Balcane had fled Venezuela in 2016 after being threatened following the release of a track criticizing Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.
“I have never, ever, ever been part of a criminal group—or anything that could someday compromise my freedom,” Balcane reported saying when officers questioned him about his links to Tren de Aragua and his tattoos.
A New York Times investigation found that most of the 238 Venezuelan men deported shortly after the Alien Enemies Act was declared had no criminal records in the U.S. and no ties to the gang.
Balcane spent three months in immigration detention in Wisconsin in what he described as “traumatic” conditions. After two months, he was ready to give up on his asylum case and leave the U.S., but the judge told him to keep fighting.
On July 8, the Venezuelan singer was granted asylum, despite rising denial rates under the Trump administration.
In such cases, the government has 30 days to appeal. When it did not, Balcane expected to be released from detention, but the government filed a motion to reopen the case two weeks after the deadline, as reported by the Post.
“It felt like they were trying to find something to incriminate me, and when they couldn’t, they still looked for a way to keep me locked up,” Balcane told the outlet.
The Post found that no criminal charges have been filed against Balcane in the U.S..
At the beginning of September, a judge denied the government’s motion, and Balcane was released five days later, meaning the 27-year-old spent 63 days in an immigration center after being granted asylum.
Despite the 30-day deadline having passed and the judge’s denial, a senior DHS official told the Daily Beast that the department will appeal the decision and continue working to “keep our communities safe.”
“The last thing I want is another conflict with the government,” Balcane told the Post.“What I went through was already traumatic enough,” he added.
Now free, the singer is focusing on his music and performing concerts around the U.S.
The post ICE Kept Singer Behind Anti-Deportation Song Locked Up for Months After Winning Asylum appeared first on The Daily Beast.
