More than 1,500 unaccompanied Cuban children arrived in the United States along the Mexican border last year, marking an unprecedented chapter in the agitated migratory avalanche from the island.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics show an escalation in the first two months of fiscal year 2023 (FY2023), which began last October, with the arrival of 583 unaccompanied Cuban minors.
The figure exceeds half of all Cuban children who entered without their parents through points on the southern border during fiscal year 2022, when 966 were registered in this immigration category. If the minors who arrived unaccompanied are added between January and November 2022, the total is 1,512.
The number should increase when the migratory flows from last December are recorded, which should be published next week. CBP sources advanced CyberCuba that the trend has continued increasingly in recent weeks.
The arrival of minors irregularly and unaccompanied to United States territory is a thermometer of the desperation that characterizes the unstoppable exodus of Cubans, and a worrying demographic symptom of a country that is running out of young people.
“It is a really significant increase,” he commented to CyberCuba Angel Leal, immigration lawyer in Miami. “The danger of letting a minor come alone is terrible and entails a broken parental responsibility, because the child or adolescent is left at the mercy of smuggling gangs and criminals during the trip.”
The ages of the newly arrived Cuban minors range between 15 and 18 years old., but smaller children have also arrived.
Processing of these cases is transferred from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS/CBP) to the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which establishes temporary immigration custody of the minor through its Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). ).
Leal explained that minors arriving at border points without accompaniment are exempt from expedited deportation and the application of the immigration regulations. expulsion under Title 42.
“Immigration custody of the minor cannot exceed 21 days, with the idea of retaining and processing them in the least restrictive and safest place possible,” the lawyer said.
After transferring the case to ORR, an unaccompanied minor assistance program official takes charge of the minor and tries to contact a relative residing in the United States or designate a guardian to take him in, while his asylum process or adjustment of immigration status.
Under the federal protection program for stranded immigrant children, US authorities can send minors to Catholic Charities shelters.
But in the case of Cubans, minors mostly make the journey with family and friends, and stay for a short time in shelters before going to live with a guardian or a family member who was already in the United States.
The number of Cuban minors could seem irrelevant if it is contrasted with the total number of 11,900 unaccompanied children of all nationalities who entered irregularly during fiscal 2022.
But experts believe that the Cuban child phenomenon is escalating to levels never seen before and it cannot be dismissed that Unaccompanied minors from Cuba are already 12% among those of other nationalities with high migration rates to the United States.
The arrivals of Cuban minors without their parents began to grow rapidly since March 2022 and reached the peak of 357 last November, coinciding with the worsening of food and medicine shortages, blackouts and government repression against protest centers.
In previous fiscal periods, the arrival of 57 minors was recorded in 2020, and only 32 in 2021.
“We are facing another episode of the great Cuban tragedy,” he told CyberCuba the academic Juan Antonio Blanco, international analyst and expert on Cuban affairs. "The population aging trend in Cuba "It is more alarming than in any other country in the hemisphere, because the citizens of the future are leaving and the birth rate is insufficient to replace them in the medium and short terms."
Blanco believes that Cuban migration patterns are equating to those of Latin America, and the solution for many distressed parents is to let their adolescent children and young people escape in search of sustenance and canceled opportunities on the island.
“I understand that parents are between a rock and a hard place thinking about the future of their children, but the dangers of these trips are immense for minors,” considered lawyer Leal. “Cuba may be hell, but I would not advise anyone to risk the life of a child in such an uncertain and brutal adventure.”
Last November, the Cuban government warned that it could prosecute citizens who carry out illegal departures with minors by sea, after several shipwrecks and tragic incidents in the Straits of Florida, as well as the return of some rafters with small children, some even months old.
The Attorney General's Office of the Republic of Cuba said that Taking minors on illegal outings can be framed in the crime of “acts contrary to the normal development of the minor.”, according to the laws in force in the country.
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