Cuba has ratified its position of accepting the deportation flights of its nationals from the United States, Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío said in an interview with the AP agency Posted this Friday.
The senior official, who chaired the island’s delegation to the round of bilateral immigration talks held on Wednesday in Washington DC, said that the departure of those flights is expected before the United States ends its pandemic-related asylum restrictions. of coronavirus, which is expected to increase the number of people seeking to enter the country through the southern border.
The diplomat described the meeting as “a productive meeting” with officials from the United States Department of Homeland Security, since “we have a lot of common understanding, both parties, the United States and Cuba, about the nature of the problem.”
Cuba accepts deportation flights for its nationals at the southern border
However, he said there was no agreement on the frequency of those flights. He specified that there was no reason why they could not return to pre-pandemic levels, that is, about twice a month. The last flight was in December 2020.
Cubans have become major players in entering the United States border with Mexico. But the high numbers of emigrants plummeted last January, after the Biden administration announced that they could immigrate to the United States through the program of parole humanitarian.
“We are going to see if we can get one in the next few weeks and then make it regular so that people can be moved easily, not to Mexico but directly to Cuba,” Fernández de Cossío said Thursday night.
According to AP, Cossío specified that the number of Cubans leaving in high-powered vessels associated with smugglers has increased after a drop earlier this year, and that more and more citizens are leaving the country to fly to Nicaragua as tourists. , the first step to travel by land to the United States-Mexico border.
It is unclear how many flights the United States will need to deter Cuban migration. “The two countries have planned five removal flights since November, but each one was canceled due to various operational problems,” said Fernández de Cossío, who again emphasized that Cuba has supported those flights.
