Havana/Fast forward a week because next Thursday is Christmas and, therefore, a holiday, a new flight arrived in Havana yesterday with 128 irregular migrants deported by the United States. The group was made up of 106 men, 21 women and one minor, as detailed this Friday on their social networks by the Home Office.
Among them was Tomás Emilio Hernández Cruzformer Cuban intelligence agent detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) in Florida, after discovering that he had hidden his true position within the Island’s Communist Party in the process of obtaining residency in the United States. This newspaper has confirmed that the former official, who was in the Broward detention center, no longer appears in the ICE detention records, a sign that he was returned to the Island.
According to the Ministry’s statement, another of the migrants was detained upon arrival “for being on parole at the time of illegally leaving the country.” The Interior information was accompanied by the image of the Global Air plane, a Mexican company, in which the migrants were returned.
With this flight, there are 53 returns in total from different countries in the region in 2025
With this flight, there are a total of 53 returns in total from different countries in the region in 2025, with 1,663 deportees in total, also say the authorities, who announced that the return of another six migrants who were intercepted at sea is scheduled for this Friday morning.
The Governments of Cuba and the United States have a bilateral agreement so that all migrants who arrive by sea in the United States are deported back to the Caribbean country. The deportation flights, which had been suspended in 2020, were resumed at the end of April 2023, mainly for Cubans considered “inadmissible” after being detained on the border with Mexico.
According to data from the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP), during the 2024 fiscal period a total of 217,615 Cubans arrived in that country, bringing the figure for the last four years to more than 860,000. With the second term of US President Donald Trump, migrant arrivals to the United States have been reduced very significantly.
