Today
Today I said goodbye to my oldest son.
I have said goodbye to him before. I watched him leave for Army boot camp. I watched him serve in Korea. I watched him deploy to Afghanistan. Those goodbyes were hard, but they made sense to me. He had volunteered to serve his country. He had sworn the same oath I once swore: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Today was different.
Today he left for another state to report to the Bureau of Prisons and begin a 100-month sentence for a crime he did not commit.
No parent should have to write that sentence. No parent should have to watch his son surrender to prison while believing, with every part of his soul, that the system got it wrong.
My son is not where he is because justice was done. He is there because of government overreach, false testimony, prosecutorial pressure, and a justice system that has forgotten how much power it holds over an individual life. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, working with the IRS, pressed this case forward. A cooperating witness gave a sworn statement to the FBI saying there was no conspiracy. Five months later, after cutting a deal with prosecutors, he testified that there was one. An IRS Special Agent admitted on the stand that he got the numbers wrong. In my view, the trial judge abandoned the role of neutral referee and made rulings that helped the prosecution when the law should have protected the accused.
Do I sound angry? I am.
Do I sound biased? Of course I am. This is my son.
But I am not asking anyone to take my word for it. Read the appeal. The legal arguments speak for themselves. Decide for yourself whether this was justice, or whether this was a prosecution that should trouble every American who still believes the Constitution means something:
https://x.com/AP1984_Media/status/2058992993093443634?s=20
I fought in two wars. My son served his country too. We both believed in the ideals we swore to defend. I never imagined that the country we served could allow a justice system to become so distorted by ambition, pressure, and institutional self-protection that an innocent man could be sent to prison while those responsible call it a victory.
No parent should have to stand helplessly in a courtroom and watch the Constitution be bent against his child by the full power of the federal government. No parent should have to watch court-appointed counsel struggle against that power while prosecutors hold every advantage. No family should have its money seized, its defense crippled, and then later be told, in effect, that the money was not actually tainted after all.
My son was offered plea deals. He could have made this easier on himself. He could have said what the government wanted him to say. He refused.
Innocent people do not always plead out. Sometimes innocent people go to trial because truth is all they have left. And sometimes the system punishes them for it.
He surrenders Friday afternoon.
The Department of Justice used its enormous power to convict my son. I know there are honorable people in federal law enforcement and in the DOJ who do their work with integrity. But what happened here was not honorable. The conduct of the prosecutors and officials responsible for this case in the Eastern District of New York should be investigated, and they should answer for it.
Today I am upset. I am angry. I am grieving.
I am also embarrassed by what my country has become in this case — the same country my son and I served, the same country whose Constitution was supposed to protect him.
Today I said goodbye to my son.
And I do not believe justice was done.
You have no idea how deeply I feel for you. I’m a mother too, and when I read your story, it felt almost identical to my daughter’s story, even though the circumstances are different. This is how they operate. These are the tactics they use. This is how they secure convictions.
First, they offer deals, but only the kind of deal that fits their narrative not the truth. They do not want to hear the truth. They want a conviction. They want to win the case. Unfortunately, your son, just like my daughter, became the easiest target because everyone else accepted plea deals.
I feel heartbroken, angry, disappointed every emotion a mother can possibly feel. But deep inside, I am also proud because my daughter refused to give in to their lies. She is serving time, and her children are paying the price, but she did not bend the knee to the DOJ.
I was born in Cuba and have lived in this country all my life. We left Cuba because we refused to bow to government abuse, lies, and intimidation. We came to America without speaking the language and without a penny in our pockets because we believed in freedom and justice. I never imagined we would one day face similar abuses here.
God bless your son. God bless my daughter. And God bless America.