On Thursday, September 11, 2025, the immigration hearing for correísta José Serrano will be reinstated in Miami. He has been detained for 35 days at the Krome Processing Center after remaining in the United States with an expired visa.
The process will be overseen by Judge Romy Lerner, who must rule on the bail request submitted by the defense while the petition for political asylum in U.S. territory is being solved.
On the first day, the magistrate requested information from Ecuador regarding Serrano's judicial background. Although he initially had no open cases, the Prosecutor's Office brought charges against him on September 3 for the murder of Fernando Villavicencio.
Nevertheless, attorney Roberto Sheldon expressed pessimism by stating that the case "looks very bad" and suggested that there could be a political agreement between the United States and Ecuador to return the former minister.
Meanwhile, in Ecuador, Judge María Daniela Ayala denied pretrial detention against Serrano in the Villavicencio case and ordered him to appear periodically in Miami or Quito, depending on the outcome of the immigration process.
José Serrano's political and personal future will be decided in Miami courts, where his asylum request collides with the new charges in Ecuador. The decision will mark a milestone in the relationship between national justice and immigration processes in the United States.
