The US Coast Guard returned 31 irregular migrants to Cuba through the port of Orozco, in Artemisa, reported the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) in its X account.
The migrants, 28 men and three women, had been intercepted at sea after engaging in two illegal departuresone for Havana and another for Matanzas.
The Prensa Latina agency stated that one of those returned was on parole for compliance with a criminal sanction at the time of leaving the Island, and will be placed at the disposal of the corresponding courts for the revocation of said benefit.
Another of the migrants, detailed the MININT, “was transferred to the investigation body for being the alleged perpetrator of a crime, which was being investigated before becoming involved in the illegal departure.”
With this return there are 41 operations from different countries in the region, and 601 people returned in 2024. Although deportation operations have increased, the number of Cuban migrants arriving in the United States remains high. According to the US Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP), in April 17,870 Cubans arrived in said territory, which represents an average of 595 each day.
April has been the month with the lowest number of Cuban arrivals this US fiscal yearstarted in October 2023. The statistics maintain a downward trend that began last December (25,050), and continued in January (22,940), February (20,815) and March (19,566).
With the April figure, they amount to 556,561 nationals of the Island who have arrived in the US since December 2021, when Nicaragua eliminated the visa requirement for Cubans and the current migration crisis began, which includes numerous movements by sea and the combination of air and land transportation. From that moment, flights to Managua became the first step of the migratory route that continues through Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.
Recently, Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío said in an interview with the CBS television network that the regime is willing to accept more deportation flights of migrants from the US. “We are open to having more” deportation flights, said the official in Washington, where he attended the meetings that took place between authorities from both countries, in a new round of immigration talks.
In this meeting, Fernández de Cossío reiterated Havana’s position: that the regime supports and calls for safe and orderly migration. This despite the fact that in recent years it has favored several immigration bridges, using the visa exemption of their citizens by allied governmentsas he did with Nicaragua, and before with Ecuador, during the governments of Rafael Correa.
With a country mired in shortages of basic products, rampant inflation and blackouts, The regime blames Washington’s sanctions for strangling its economy and the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which grants special entry rights to Cubans and support upon arrival, for encouraging its young people to emigrate.
