More than 200,000 Cubans entered the United States through its land borders in the recently concluded fiscal year 2023 (FY2023), according to official figures released this Saturday.
The Department of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detailed in its report closing of the year that from October 1, 2022 to September 30 last, 200,287 Cubans requested political refuge in US territory.
This year, September was the month with the highest influx of Cubans to US border points, with a total of 15,677 citizens of the Island. August, June and January also exceeded 10,000 encounters at the border.
The arrival of Cuban migrants at the border of the United States and Mexico decreased sharply in January, after the implementation of the program humanitarian parole by the administration of Joe Biden.
The first three months of fiscal year 2023 (October, November and December 2022) were the ones with the greatest influx of Cubans, just before the approval of the program (29,882; 35,880; 47,079 respectively).
The majority of Cubans entered US territory through the southern border (Mexico). While an influx of 490 Cubans was recorded at the northern border (Canada), 142,352 Cubans arrived at the southern border points.
The figures confirm the largest irregular exodus from Cuba in the history of the United States, a crisis that is also evident in the Straits of Florida. with 4,210 Cubans returned to the island, after being detained during their sea crossings (figures from January to the beginning of August, according to official sources of the Cuban regime).
With the entry into force of the humanitarian parole, in January the arrests of undocumented Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who tried to illegally cross the border decreased by 97% compared to the last month of 2022.
However, the challenge of the measure from Biden administration before US courts, just as the accumulation of unresolved applications has once again spurred Cubans, who prefer to risk the Central American journey in order to reach US soil, rather than wait for the slow administrative process of parole.
At the end of August, there were 41,000 Cubans who arrived in the United States since the approval last January of the humanitarian parole program, according to official CBP figures.
Since its implementation until the end of May, it was known that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had received more than 1.5 million parole requests, of them about 380 thousand Cuban nationals.
The large volume of requests prevents the process carried out by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (USCIS) can attend to them without delays, since about 1,200 cases are reviewed daily, while between 10 and 12 thousand requests are submitted.
In the midst of this delicate scenario, officials from the United States and Cuba will hold a meeting on November 14 in Havana. new round of talks on bilateral Migration Agreements, as reported by the State Department.
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