“It's a hunt for Cubans, like that, with that name,” he told CyberCuba Alina Mojena Labaut, one of the Cuban women stranded in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, waiting for her request for political asylum in the United States to be processed.
In a video recently filmed by some members of that group - a recording that they began sending to various media for publication last Saturday - the Cubans denounce that the Mexican authorities are persecuting them in a way never seen before to deport them to the Island.
“We do not understand that if the United States tells us to behave civilized here to enter the country in an orderly manner, we now realize that the Mexican authorities are ordering them to persecute us and return us to Cuba,” he says in the introduction of the video one of the stranded Cubans, who identifies himself as Yunirán Batista Pedrosa.
According to those who give their testimonies in this almost 3-minute filming, at the Migrant Assistance Center they were informed that in effect, the new policy towards Cubans is zero tolerance.
“They are going to start taking us out of the places where we are living, to detain us and then deport us,” he says. We do not understand that if we are asking for refuge in the United States, now they are harassing us here while we wait disciplined for the procedure.
According to the testimony of two women, during the night of last Friday local authorities “in a white van, all dressed in green uniforms” went to the homes where they are and asked them for legal documents.
“He told us to give him the papers that authorized us to be in Mexico. As if they didn't know that we don't have papers and that we are just here waiting for the refugee process in the United States. There we had to flee, with what we had on us. We are afraid".
Since the entry into force on June 13 of the new immigration agreement between the United States and Mexico, Cubans could wait for the processing of their asylum applications on the US side. Some, the majority, in detention centers; a lucky few received parole.
The Trump Administration's new agreement grants Cubans permission to enter the United States only for the duration of their court dates. Then, they must return to Mexican soil to continue waiting while their cases are examined in El Paso, Texas, one of the Courts most feared by applicants: statistics speak of 98% of applications being denied.
“We no longer have a peso on us, nor documents, we have been wandering through Central America for months, we cannot return to Cuba because they are going to make our life a yogurt, this is hell,” said another Cuban immigrant in this recording.
To add to the stress, there are also long queues to present their cases to the border authorities that sometimes last for weeks. For those who have not presented their cases, Mexico gives them only 28 days to do so or they must leave the national territory.
For several of the Cubans who have testified that they must flee from the Mexican authorities, that 28-day period has expired and they must remain in hiding to be able to present their requests for political asylum according to their turn in "the queue."
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