MIAMI, United States. — The Cuban regime plans to once again accept deportation flights to the island, the US agency announced this Thursday. Associated Press (AP).
The measure follows from the talks on immigration issues held this week in Washington by officials from both countries.
The vice chancellor of the regime, Carlos Fernández de Cossio, confirmed to PA that Cuban deportation flights from the US will resume this month,
According to the official, deportation flights are expected before the United States ends asylum restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic, scheduled for May 11.
In an interview with the US news agency, Fernández de Cossio described the meeting in Washington with officials from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as “a productive meeting.”
At the time of reporting, DHS had not responded to a request for comment made by PA.
In January of this year, the Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States, Alejandro Mayorkas, assured during a visit to Miami that the deportation flights to Cuba had not resumed, despite having been announced since November of last year.
“What we are implementing are the immigration agreements. We are building the capacity of our consular offices there (in Cuba) to reissue visas for people to arrive safely in the United States. In the same way, we are modifying the Parole Program for Cuban Family Reunification. One of the elements of the migration agreements is to resume expulsion flights, which we have not done yet,” said the US official at a press conference held in the City of the Sun.
The statements made by Mayorkas in Miami overturn the official version of the Cuban regime, which indicated at the end of 2022 that the deportations from the US to the Caribbean island were “issue resolved” and that they only expected the northern country to set a “flight and date” for the repatriation of inadmissibles.
