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Mariachi Brothers Detained by ICE Invited to Open for Kacey Musgraves After Release
The crowd went wild when the three Gámez-Cuéllar brothers and their father took the stage on Sunday night.
It was no ordinary concert. Two months ago, the brothers and their father, all musicians, were being held in federal immigration detention centers. Now, dressed in black mariachi suits, they were opening for the country music star Kacey Musgraves in New Braunfels, Texas.
Just before they went on, the family uttered a prayer of thanks. “Thank you, Father, for giving us this great opportunity,” Antonio Yesayahu Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, addressed God, as he stood next to his 15-year-old brother, Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar; their 12-year-old brother, Joshua Gámez-Cuéllar; and their father, Luis Antonio Gámez. “We ask you, Father, to protect us and bathe us in your light.”
In early March, the Gámez-Cuéllar family became snarled in President Trump’s mass deportation campaign. Their detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents drew widespread and bipartisan outcries that led to the family’s release from an immigration facility in Dilley, Texas. The oldest sibling, Antonio, was released from a separate detention center near the border.
Shortly after the family was released, Ms. Musgraves extended an invitation to the brothers on Instagram: “great so come on the road with me.”
Antonio and Caleb, along with their younger brother, Joshua, all renowned mariachi players from McAllen, Texas, jumped at the opportunity to open three shows for Ms. Musgraves with their father. The performances on her Middle of Nowhere tour began Sunday and will continue for two more days at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, northeast of San Antonio. The venue is a whitewashed building that resembles a small church and considers itself the oldest continuously operating dance hall in Texas.
“We were honored to be invited,” their mother, Emma Guadalupe Cuéllar López, said. At the concert, Antonio belted out a Spanish-language rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” to applause and cheers.
Moments earlier, he whistled Michael Jackson’s song “Thriller,” as he helped his younger brother Joshua adjust his bright red moño charro, a mariachi tie. Their father kissed Joshua’s forehead as encouragement.
“It is wild to believe that we went from being in such a dark place to opening a show for one of country’s biggest stars,” Antonio said.
Last June, Representative Monica De La Cruz, Republican of Texas, invited the brothers to perform at the U.S. Capitol with their bandmates and then visit the White House. Antonio was crowned the best mariachi trumpeter in Texas earlier this year.
For the last three years, the family lived a version of the American dream, in a part of the country where mariachi music is central to public education and border culture.
The Gámez-Cuéllar family entered the United States in 2023 at the border crossing in Brownsville, Texas, on an asylum claim and settled in nearby McAllen. Mr. Gámez, the father, said his family had fled San Luis Potosí, Mexico, where cartel members had kidnapped him.
Their immigration status remains in limbo, pending future court dates, he said.
The family members said they had followed the law by attending every court date and had a check-in with ICE officials in January. Initially, they said, they were told to return in June, but then the family received an unexpected call from ICE saying that they needed to check in on Feb. 25. They were swiftly detained.
In interviews before the show, family members described being held in deplorable conditions at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, a sprawling jail fashioned out of trailers that serves as the country’s largest family immigration detention site.
Mr. Gámez said he tried not to think about the moment his oldest son was handcuffed and transferred to another detention center near the border, “like if he was a criminal,” he said. “It was very painful.”
“We are happy to be together again, far from there,” Ms. Cuéllar Lopez added.
The detention center in Dilley, where most of the family was held, was shuttered by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2024 and reopened by President Trump last year. The center has since become an often-criticized symbol of the crackdown on immigrant families. It was where Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy detained by federal agents in Minnesota, was held with his father until a similar outcry led to their release.
After they performed four songs, the family members returned to their green room and collapsed on the couches. Mr. Gàmez said he was happy with their numbers. “It was a great experience,” he said.
They hope it’s not the last one. On a recent day in April, the Gámez-Cuéllar family said the brothers were focused on the future. Antonio, who is graduating from high school this year, plans to attend the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and join its mariachi team. His brothers intend to keep playing for their school bands.
“Mariachi music will be in our future,” Antonio said.
Gasoline prices are displayed at a Mobil gas station on April 29 in Portland, Ore.
Jenny Kane/AP
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Jenny Kane/AP
Gas prices in the U.S. have gone up more than 30 cents a gallon in the last week and are slated to continue rising as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed amid the Iran war.
The cost for regular gas as of Sunday is an average $4.446 — a week ago it was $4.099, according to AAA’s fuel site. U.S. gas prices were an average $2.98 on Feb. 26 — two days before the war in Iran began — and a year ago, the average price of gas was $3.171, according to data from AAA.
Gas prices in the U.S. are the highest they have been since late July 2022, said the automotive group.
President Trump has promised that when the war in Iran ends, that gas prices will “drop like a rock.” It is unclear when the war will end, but even when it does and the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, gas prices could still remain high, according to experts.
And prices could go up higher the longer the strait, which is a crucial route for oil and natural gas trade, stays closed, said Kevin Book, co-founder of ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm.
“When inventories are low and you can’t get oil out of the ground or out of the strait, you should expect prices to keep rising at least until demand capitulates and starts to contract,” Book told NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe on Weekend Edition on Sunday. “So, we may be weeks or even months, depending on how long the strait stays closed, from the peak of prices from this crisis.”
Book added that it could take months for ships trapped in the Strait of Hormuz to get through, damaged facilities to be repaired, and inventories to be replenished before gas prices return to what is considered normal. And even if gas prices were to fall fast and quickly, Book predicted that the reason would “probably be a bad one, not a good one.”
“It would probably be recession, undercutting demand, knocking the knees out from under the market,” he said.
Between the weeks of March 20 and April 24, the Department of Energy released 17.5 million barrels of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to curb high fuel prices stemming from the war, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Seven countries within the OPEC+ group on Sunday announced they agreed to increase production by 188,000 barrels per day starting in June as a commitment to “market stability.”
Higher prices at the gas pump are also impacting Americans’ wallets amid a weakened U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar depreciated about 10% from early January 2025 to the end of April 2026 — with losses in the first half of 2025 being the biggest since 1973, according to an analysis by Morgan Stanley.
A weakened dollar could make it more expensive for Americans to travel abroad and increase the price of imported goods — while American exporters could see a financial boost, according to financial analysts.
Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, on Sunday sought to contrast the Justice Department’s indictment of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey over a social media post with other instances in which people have shared the same message, saying that the department had gathered additional evidence during an 11-month investigation.
Mr. Comey was indicted last week over a photo that he posted on Instagram in May 2025 of seashells on a beach that spelled out “86 47,” which the department characterized as a threat to the president. The charge was the second attempt by the Justice Department under President Trump to prosecute Mr. Comey and the department’s latest effort to pursue charges against the president’s perceived enemies.
Asked on NBC’s “Meet The Press” whether others who displayed the same numbers, or bought or sold T-shirts with the same message, would face the same prosecution, Mr. Blanche said no.
The “86 47” message, Mr. Blanche said, is “posted constantly — that phrase is used constantly.” He added, “Every one of those statements do not result in indictments.” What makes Mr. Comey’s case different, he argued, is other evidence collected, which he said he could not describe.
“Of course the seashells are part of that case,” said Mr. Blanche, who acknowledged that proving Mr. Comey’s intent would be crucial to his prosecution. “You prove intent with witnesses; you prove intent with documents,” he said, adding that there was “a body of evidence” that led to Mr. Comey’s indictment. The three-page indictment, secured on Tuesday, was focused only on the seashell post.
Mr. Comey has insisted he is innocent and will fight the charges. He has said he did not associate the phrase “86” with violence, and pointed to its origins in the restaurant business, where it has for decades been used to refer to removing something from the menu or throwing out an unruly customer.
Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, appeared later on the show and said there was only one thing that distinguished Mr. Comey’s case from other examples of people using the phrase: “the fact that James Comey is a political opponent of the president; it’s the fact that the president has called on him for prosecution; it’s the fact that Todd Blanche wants to keep his job.”
Mr. Schiff called the charges against Mr. Comey “deeply illegitimate” and said he expected the case to be thrown out of court before it ever gets to a jury.
A search and rescue operation is underway in southern Morocco after two U.S. service members were reported missing off the southern coast of the North African nation during annual training exercises.
The training exercise, known as African Lion, ground to a halt Sunday as U.S. and Moroccan assets were redirected to the search and rescue operation, officials told a CBS News crew on the scene.
The soldiers went missing in an accident which was unrelated to the training exercise. The names of the soldiers and further details have not yet been released.
CBS News reporters, embedded with the U.S. military, were in their tents Saturday evening at 9 p.m. local time when a base-wide head-count was conducted. Helicopters were heard throughout the night as the search began, and on Sunday morning, the reporters observed various planes, helicopters and drones in the area around the coast.
African Lion is the largest annual joint military exercise led by AFRICOM, one of the U.S. Department of Defense’s 11 unified combatant commands. The exercise occurs in a vast desert where the Sahara Desert meets the Atlantic Ocean near the Cap Draa Training Area, outside the city of Tan Tan.
The African Lion training exercise brings together thousands of troops from the United States, African partner nations, and NATO allies to train for modern warfare across land, air, sea, cyber, and space domains.
This year’s exercise involves more than 5,000 personnel from over 40 nations, with a growing focus on advanced technologies, including drones, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence.
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