In a letter sent today to US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, of Richmond California, and the mayors of twelve other California cities requested, on humanitarian grounds, that Adriana Perez O’Connor and Olga Salanueva Arango be allowed to visit their husbands who are incarcerated in the U.S., and who they have not seen for nine years and seven years respectively.
Gerardo Hernandez, one of the two Cuban nationals, is currently imprisoned at the USP Victorville in California, and Rene Gonzalez, the other Cuban national is currently in FCI Marianna, Florida.
The California mayors believe that the there is no justifiable reason to deny these families the right to visitation
The two Cuban nationals are part of “the Cuban Five”, a group of five Cuban nationals who received long prison terms for monitoring Miami-based Cuban American extremist groups involved in violent terrorist acts against Cuba. They are currently appealing their sentences.
“I’m deeply saddened by the fact that our federal government has not yet allowed these two women to visit their husbands in the U.S. They have the means to come and they will return to their country after the visit. It seems to me that our nation, who proclaims family values to the world, can do much better than this and allow these families to visit” said Gayle McLaughlin, the elected mayor of Richmond, CA, a city with over 100,000 residents in Northern California.
The other California mayors who co-signed the humanitarian request are Robert Lieber of Albany, Sam Pierce of Sebastopol, Emily Reilly of Santa Cruz, Dennis Donohue of Salinas, Mary Craton of Canyon Lake, Maricela Morales of Port Hueneme, Elba Guerrero of Huntington Park, Felipe Aguirre of Maywood, Tom Bates of Berkeley, Larry Bragman of Fairfax, Bill Bogaard of Pasadena, and Woody Fridae of Winters.
“We all hope that this matter will be reviewed favorably and that these two women will be granted entry visas into the United States to visit their husbands,” said Mayor McLaughlin.
Copies of the Mayors' letter to the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, was sent to Paul D. Clement, U.S. Solicitor General, to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, as well as to the Speaker of the House, California representative Nancy Pelosi.
