Cuban Sergio Pérez was detained after attending what he thought was a routine visit at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office last Friday. His relatives fear that he will be deported on the third flight that will leave Florida for Havana on June 14.
Pérez told the authorities that he has no family on the island and that in Florida he has a 10-year-old son named Yordano under his protection. “I don’t understand why they did this, they know that he has a son here, without a mother”, declared a relative of the Cuban Univisión 23 journalist Javier Díaz.
Sergio Pérez is one of the 36 Cubans who were arrested by ICE in October 2022 to be deported, but who, thanks to pressure from family members and lawyers, was released shortly after. Last week he was arrested and taken to Krome and then transferred to the Broward Transitional Center (BTC).
Pérez told the authorities that he has no family on the island and that in Florida he has a 10-year-old son named Yordano under his protection.
“It is a very big blow, we are trying to bear it,” said little Yordano, who arrived in the US last December and was able to meet with his father Sergio Pérez. “I ask that they not deport him because it is the only thing I have here.”
The United States resumed deportation flights for Cubans on April 24. So far, it has returned 188 people to the island. In the first days of May, the US returned 65 migrants on the second flight from Florida. Among the group was Emir Rodrigueza 19-year-old boy who, due to his illegal rafting, lost his place at a university on the island.
On the other hand, the United States Coast Guard returned 25 rafters this Sunday, including 16 men, eight women and one minor, bringing the number of migrants returned to the island from different nations so far this year to 3,940. year, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
According to official data, this is the 50th return made in 2023 by the US authorities. In total there are 2,949 people, the returnees. This same week, four other Cubans were deported from the Cayman Islands.
The US Coast Guard returned 25 rafters this Sunday, including 16 men, eight women and one minor, bringing the number of migrants returned to the island from different nations to 3,940
Meanwhile, in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott is following up on the construction of a floating barrier on the Rio Grande by the end of this month. The republican ordered last Friday the placement of four-foot-high buoys to prevent migrants from crossing illegally.
Abbott will invest a million dollars in this barrier and it is part of its controversial Operation Lone Star to contain the illegal passage of migrants. This measure is added to the barbed wire barrier that he ordered to be placed in April of last year to contain the crossing of the Rio Grande, including several Cubans.
The Texas president signed into law a package of six border security bills. One of them declares “terrorist organizations” the drug cartels and criminal groups that they use cubans as coyotes to move migrants.
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