Cuba continues to bleed to death through emigration. A total of 21 Cubans were repatriated to the island this Tuesday, after being intercepted in two operations US Coast Guard.
One of them occurred on Friday, around 1:30 pm, when the coast guard ship Kathleen Moore located a sailboat about 46 miles south of Key West. The other, on Saturday, around 11 am, after a citizen called the security guards of that police force alerting them to the presence of a rustic boat approximately 5 miles east of Islamorada, also in Florida.
Since October 1, 2021, the Coast Guard has intercepted 961 Cubans, compared to 838 for the entire previous year. The year 2021 saw a jump in the numbers of rafters detained in the Florida Straits, which had drastically decreased after the end of the wet foot/dry foot policy decreed by then President Barack Obama.
That number represents almost 70% more than those who entered in January, 9,827. Arrested in Mexican territory and deported last month were 436 Cubans, and some 2,000 requested refuge
The exodus from the island to the US, by sea or by land, is an open key. According to data published this Tuesday by the Department of Customs and Border Protection (CBP, for its acronym in English) and confirmed this Wednesday by the National Institute of Migration of Mexico, in February a total of 16,657 Cubans entered its territory irregularly, the highest number recorded in a month in more than twenty years.
That number represents almost 70% more than those who entered in January, 9,827. Arrested in Mexican territory and deported last month were 436 Cubans, and some 2,000 applied for refuge.
In five months, since the beginning of this fiscal year, in October 2021, a total of 47,431 Cuban migrants have entered the US, 46,752 of them through border points with Mexico and 679 through other areas. In front of them, there were 39,303 nationals of the Island who entered US territory in the entire previous fiscal year.
The avalanche of migrants coincides with a resurgence of repression and the economic crisis on the island, which include a rise in the cost of living, the devaluation of the Cuban peso, and an increase in uncertainty about the short and medium-term future of the state. country financial.
This Wednesday, elements of Public Security from Isla Mujeres, 13 kilometers from Cancun, Quintana Roo (Mexico), secured a raft on the beach known as La Media Luna.
“Tourists come to this area to ‘splash’ and take pictures due to the strong waves and they were the ones who reported the boat,” he tells 14ymedio Officer Mario Escamilla. “Some fishermen noticed that some people took some bags from the raft and went into the center of Isla Mujeres.”
Playa La Media Luna is located four kilometers from the city center. “We are reviewing some video surveillance cameras, but it will be difficult to locate them if these migrants received support,” said agent Escamilla.
The state of Quintana Roo has become a route for the illegal entry of Cubans in recent years, so the INM raised its alert since last February before a possible arrival of rafters. Between October and December 2021, 29 rafters who arrived at Isla Mujeres were detained. Of 60 Cubans detained in that same year, Migration deported 45 and 15 received legal advice to obtain refuge.
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