High-level officials from the United States and Cuba will meet this Thursday in Washington to discuss the migration crisis. As reported on Monday by Reuters, citing sources familiar with the matter, the Cuban delegation will be headed by the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, and is expected to meet with representatives of the US State Department as well as other administrative agencies.
The British agency assures that Washington wants Havana to accept more deportees, something that the Díaz-Canel government stopped doing last octoberas denounced this April by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE).
“Cubans currently occupy the second largest group that arrives at the southwestern border of the United States,” a State Department spokesman told Reuters, saying that they have seen “a significant increase in irregular Cuban immigrants to the United States, both through by land and by sea”.
“Cubans currently occupy the second largest group arriving at the southwestern border of the United States,” a State Department spokesman told Reuters.
At the end of November, the island’s regime agreed with President Daniel Ortega on a “free visa” for Cubans traveling to Nicaragua, which from that very moment became the springboard for a river of emigrants seeking to reach the United States. by land route.
Until the end of February, and from the beginning of the US fiscal year – which begins on October 1 – they entered the US more than 46,000 Cubansa figure that exceeded the 35,000 of the so-called “rafter crisis” of 1994. Some estimates predict that by September 30, 2022 they will have entered the country from the north around 150,000 citizens of the Islandmore than the 125,000 who entered this territory by sea during the Mariel exodus, between April and October 1980.
The number of Cubans detained on the border between the United States and Mexico soared to 16,531 in February, the highest total recorded in a single month, according to data from the United States Customs and Border Protection Office, the British agency recalls.
Several US politicians have not hesitated to hold Havana responsible for the current migratory exodus and some of them, such as Republican Congressman Marco Rubio, have even branded it an “act of war.”
Thursday’s will be the first meeting at the highest level since Joe Biden was inaugurated as president last year. Bilateral relations have been marked by the Cuban regime’s repression of the protests on July 11, which caused Washington to establish sanctions against officials and repressors on the island.
________________________
Collaborate with our work:
The team of 14ymedio is committed to doing serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time becoming a member of our newspaper. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
