More than 1,300 irregular migrants were returned to Cuba last year, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) provided through the official Cuban press.
A total of 1,384 Cubans were returned to the Island in 2024, reported the National Television News (NTV), which recorded a total of 93 repatriation operations from various countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In total, 978 migrants were returned to Cuba from the United States last year, resulting in 406 Cubans being repatriated by the authorities of third countries.
After being suspended in December 2020, deportation flights between the United States and Cuba were resumed in April 2023, following negotiations aimed at addressing the migration crisis.
The elected president of the United States, Donald Trump, promised mass deportations beginning when he takes office on January 20. Among all U.S. administrations, Trump’s first term set the record for repatriations, with 3,385 Cubans returned to the Island.
However, various immigration lawyers have pointed out that Cubans are not currently among those who will likely contribute to the potential number of deportations under the incoming administration, as citizens from the Island have significant legal support under the Cuban Adjustment Act.
However, the Republican announced a tightening of immigration regulations for his new term and promised to eliminate the humanitarian parole program and the CBP One application, a key tool for making appointment requests and crossing the border legally.
More than 42,000 Cubans have deportation orders in the U.S., but the regime refuses to accept them, according to internal data from the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) obtained in mid-December by Fox News.
Statistics reveal the nationalities of more than 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge from the Department of Justice but are still in the country and not in ICE custody.
In the case of Cuba, the number rises to 42,084 migrants, placing it just behind El Salvador (203,822), Honduras (261,651), Guatemala (253,413), and Mexico (252,044).
In February 2024, ICE's annual report revealed that in 2023 the United States issued 6,199,629 removal orders, the highest number since 2020. Among them, over 442,000 Cubans had their cases still pending.
However, he noted that such figures did not correspond to final expulsion orders, as only 1,292,830 had a definitive exit from the country, while 4,906,799 were awaiting a final order.
The Cuban migration crisis
In the context of the severe Cuban migration crisis, over 850,000 migrants from the Island arrived in the United States from 2022 until September 2023.
From October 1, 2021, until the end of the fiscal year 2023, approximately 533,000 Cubans had arrived in the United States, a figure equivalent to 4.8% of the 11.1 million residents of the Caribbean nation.
According to data from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), more than 208,000 Cuban asylum seekers arrived in the country through borders between October 1, 2023, and August of this year.
These figures are in addition to the 110,000 Cubans who were examined and authorized to travel through humanitarian parole from 2023 until July 2024, as well as an undetermined number of migrants with other types of visas for which no official figures are available.
The truth is that the Cuban population fell by 18 percent between 2022 and 2023, and 2024 is on track to become the second fiscal year with the highest influx of Cubans at the southern border of the United States, according to a report by AFP citing official data.
Additionally, it is noteworthy that the number of Cubans intercepted by authorities at sea or on the U.S. coasts just before the end of the past fiscal year reached 65,911. This figure is derived by subtracting the encounters at the northern border (362) and those at the southern border (142,035) from the total number of encounters (208,308).
In mid-April 2024, just before the 38th Round of Cuba-U.S. Migration Talks was to take place in Washington, the regime in Havana acknowledged that the current migration crisis is "the largest in Cuba's history," but blamed the United States for this situation due to its pressure policies and for encouraging emigration with "extraordinary and artificial incentives."
For their part, U.S. authorities reiterate time and again that the borders are not open to individuals who do not have a legal basis for entering the country, and that those who attempt to do so irregularly will be subject to expulsion in accordance with Title 8.
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