Some Immigration agents are hiding behind a “discretionary criterion” to not allow Cubans with Spanish nationality and travelers from the Island with a tourist visa who arrive at the Manuel Crescencio Rejón International Airport in Cancun to enter Mexico. This was reported by relatives of 19 passengers who were returned to Cuban territory on June 3.
“As they are being interviewed, they are put in a cell,” says a relative of an affected person through a video uploaded to the Cubans in Merida Facebook account. He says that the passenger arrived at the air terminal on Magnicharters airline flight UJ7781.
After the interview, they took him, along with 12 other Cubans from the same flight, to a room where there were two mats and they placed seven women in another room. They took their cell phones and after 14 hours of being in that place, elements of the Navy went for them to transfer them on a flight to Mexico City. They guarded them and treated them like “drug traffickers, criminals,” they lament.
It was not until they were on the plane that their cell phones were returned to them, with the warning that they could not call anyone in Mexico. Cubans with Spanish nationality were told that “they had no rights.” The abuse was confirmed in a letter that reached the Editorial Office of 14ymediosigned by 12 relatives of the affected passengers.
Those who made “a call were recorded by a guard,” said the complainant. “They didn’t even give them privacy, they had them there all the time like they were criminals.”
“As they are being interviewed, they are put in a cell,” says a relative of an affected person through a video uploaded to the Cubanos en Mérida Facebook account.
Deborath Rodríguez, originally from Havana, who works for a production company in Mexico City, tells this newspaper that “there has been an illegality in that terminal for years. A cousin with a tourist visa took that route in 2018, upon arriving At the interview, the agent withheld her visa and accused her of lying. She was unable to enter and had to return to Cuba. This is outrageous.”
In the Immigration Law there is no section that addresses the “discretionary criterion” by which the 19 Cubans were returned to the island. “The problem is that by not providing for this margin of discretion in the operational part, the agents make an interpretation of the rule at their convenience. Is it illegal? Yes, but unfortunately these violations will prevail as long as the Ministry of the Interior allows it,” he explains. a 14ymedio the defense attorney for migrants José Luis Pérez Jiménez.
The lawyer recalls that the tourist visa presented by many Cubans guarantees them a regular stay in the country, however, “the agents are violating the rights of free transit and therefore many migrants are also seeking protection to avoid being detained.”
On his Facebook wall the user Leo Betanc assured that between last Thursday and Friday, Migration prevented more than 40 Cubans from entering the Manuel Crescencio Rejón international airport. What he considered “government hunting” led by the delegate, Carmen Yadira de los Santos Robledo.
“The excesses of power of this delegate cannot go unpunished in a supposed democracy… someone must remove this lady who is not qualified for her duties, show that there is a true Fourth Transformation,” he published.
of the Saints was denounced for acts of corruption before the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) in May 2020, when he was in charge of Migration in the state of Chiapas. Activist Luis Rey García, coordinator of the Center for Human Dignification accused the official of charging Cuban migrants $300 to give them a card with stamps from the National Migration Institute (INM).
De los Santos was reported for acts of corruption before the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) in May 2020, when she was in charge of Migration in the state of Chiapas
In August 2021, the official was singled out for placing 12 relatives among Migration personnel in Chiapas. One of them, Aldo Ivan Robledo Paez It was recorded when he attacked migrants during the advance of a caravan through the border state with Guatemala.
INM figures report the arrest of 115,379 migrants in the first quarter of the year, of them 15,907 were Cuban. A source from the agency confirmed the return of people to the island, but assured that they were undocumented migrants who had been detained in different states.
Other reports collected by this newspaper indicate that numerous Cubans who tried to enter Mexico with their long-term visa and multiple entries into the Schengen area, with which they had previously visited that North American country, were returned to the island. The same happens with others who have some Latin American nationality such as the Uruguayan, for which a visa is not required when entering Mexico. In the review filter they are only asked to have a valid passport.
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