“Are they going to deport us? We don’t want to return to Cuba,” Mayelín told the immigration agent as she asked them for their documents and hand over her cell phone. The young woman was part of the group of 24 Cubans detained in the city of Piedras Negras, on the border with the United States, according to the National Institute of Migration (INM) reported this Thursday.
Mayelin along with 11 other Cubans, including a 10-year-old girl, got out of a vehicle that left them in the area known as “las vegas”, located 50 meters from the Rio Grande, and hid in the bushes. The dust left by the car as it moved away from the scene alerted the police, who were on the International Bridge II.
“When the patrol and the Immigration truck approached the place, the Cubans tried to reach the river, but one of the units caught up with them,” he told 14ymedio the agent of the Civil Police of Coahuila Juan Ortiz. “Two of the women, who said their names were Odalys and Eliany, went into crisis. ‘Not to Cuba,’ they told the Immigration agent.”
Once at the INM state offices, the group of six women, one minor and five men were offered advice to process their refugee application. “They will not be deported, but they must remain in the immigration station until they are granted a QR code to travel through the state of Coahuila,” a migration source told this newspaper, without clarifying the reason why the cell phones were taken from them and if they had already been returned.
“When the patrol and the Immigration truck approached the place, the Cubans tried to reach the river, but one of the units caught up with them”
The case of two of the six Cubans who were detained this Wednesday on the banks of the Rio Grande is different. “These people will be deported because they presented false licenses and credentials and were held at the immigration station but managed to evade security and escaped. There are reports that another two of these illegals crossed into Eagle Pass and the rest managed to escape,” it underlines. migration source.
So far in February, the entry to Piedras Negras of 462 Cubans with QR has been reported, he points out to 14ymedio the commander of Civil Protection, Francisco Contreras. “The problem is the arrival of irregular migrants, which is almost double.” In four days, 714 undocumented immigrants were intercepted.
In the first fortnight of February it was dismantled a network of coyotes and counterfeiters that passed Cubans to the United States. “Some leave and others arrive. It’s a shame, on Tuesday, in front of IMSS clinic 11, two smugglers walked calmly with 14 migrants, 10 of them from Cuba.” The migrants stayed four days in a hotel and were to be transferred to a house near the Rio Grande, where they were told they would be swum out.
In the southern part of the country, in Tapachula, where 30 Cubans were accused of leading aggressions against the National Guard, the immigration procedures of 11 natives of the Island were accelerated, while three had their request rejected for having presented copies of QR for their attention and they must repeat the process.
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