An operation by the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) conducted on Sunday across all Popular Councils in the Havana municipality of San Miguel del Padrón resulted in 71 individuals being detained and transported to the 11th Municipal Unit of the Revolutionary National Police (PNR) in the area, as reported by the state-run newspaper Tribuna de La Habana.
What the regime presented as an action against crime hides a practice that outrages millions of Cubans: among those detained are individuals classified by the authorities themselves as "undocumented and illegal in the capital with inappropriate behavior," that is, Cuban citizens living in Havana without having obtained the administrative residency permit required by Decree-Law 217.
The information first circulated through the Facebook profile "Héroes de Azul en Cuba" of the PNR, but the post was deleted shortly after its release, a detail that adds opacity to an operation that was already generating backlash on social media.
The remaining detainees face charges for drug possession, engagement in prostitution, possession of a concealed weapon, illegal economic activity, and non-payment of fines—categories that the regime indiscriminately combined with those who merely reside in the capital without papers.
This equivalence reveals the logic of the Decree-Law 217, approved in April 1997 under Fidel Castro's government: any Cuban coming from another province who wishes to settle in Havana must request prior administrative authorization. Those without it may be fined and forcibly deported to their province of origin.
The regulation turns Havana into a kind of state with its own borders within the national territory, and its consequences disproportionately affect the so-called "Orientals," Cubans from Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, Granma, Holguín, or Las Tunas, who are subjected to identity checks at transportation terminals and central areas of the capital.
Human Rights Watch documented that, according to a Cuban official, the police had forcibly expelled people from Havana in approximately 20,000 instances in enforcement of this decree. As early as May 1997, around 2,000 individuals were returned to their provinces during the initial weeks of the regulation's implementation.
Those who live informally in the capital cannot access state jobs nor do they have the right to purchase the subsidized basic food basket in Havana. The fear of being intercepted is constant.
The debate about this paradox had reignited weeks earlier when the Cuban content creator Lil Lemon went viral with a testimony describing the cycle of expulsions: “Obtaining residency in Havana as an 'eastern' was very difficult, and some relied on temporary permits lasting two or three months,” he explained. “They could be deported on January 1 and return on January 16.”
The response on social media was immediate. "I was deported to Camagüey twice in the same week," wrote a user reacting to the video.
Decree 217 was partially amended in 2011 by the , which relaxed some conditions for family reunification but maintained its essential restrictions. In April 2026, a report presented to the UN CEDAW Committee documented that internal migrant women from eastern Cuba continue to experience police harassment, forced evictions, and exclusion from basic services in the capital.
Meanwhile, the PNR celebrated the operation with a message on its Facebook profile—now deleted—that read: "The street speaks, the complaint arrives, and the response is swift. Citizen tranquility is built every day, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood."
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