The dream of Cubans Gualberto Brache Torrens and Cristhian Isaac Iglesias de los Reyes Gavilán, who arrived in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo at dawn on August 14, was cut short just two days later. On the 16th, when they set out for the United States, they were detained by members of the National Guard at a checkpoint in the municipality of Escárcega, Campeche.
The lawyer José Luis Pérez Jiménez tells this newspaper that there were “excesses” in his arrest, “violation of human rights” and omission of legal instances, since “a judge has ordered his immediate release.”
At the time of their arrest, says this migrant defender, the Mexican authorities questioned Brache and Iglesias about their alleged relationship with other 16 Cubans with false voter credentials, who were intercepted last August 12 along with two coyotes. The migrants were transferred to the US in two vans and had paid 5,000 pesos.
From the accusations they passed to the threats on the part of the immigration agents, who in addition to “keeping them incommunicado for 14 days, taking away their cell phones and their passports, have assured them that they will be deported,” the lawyer details. Just this Tuesday they allowed the activist Linda Isabel Cancino Orantes, under her supervision, “to hold a talk with the Cubans.”
All migrants in an irregular migratory situation, Pérez specified, “have the right to be treated without any discrimination and with due respect for their human rights” as stated in article 67 of the Migration Law Mexican. “It is unfortunate that the Immigration authorities refuse to give way to a judicial order,” complains the lawyer, who trusts that a last legal resource will allow the release of Brache and Iglesias.
A source from the state prosecutor’s office told 14ymedio that this year several coyotes with migrants have been detained and that “Cubans are resuming the routes that connect the Island with Isla Mujeres, Cancun, Playa del Carmen and the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, at the of Boca Paila, an area of difficult access and without surveillance”.
in Quintana Roo, according to the report Sea inside: migrants and castaways at sea, elaborated by the United Nations, there are at least four migratory routes from the Island. Otherwise, the transit of Cubans through Mexico in their attempt to reach the United States has increased exponentially. So far in fiscal year 2022, which began in October, the Border Patrol has detained 175,147 Cubanswhich exceeds the figures recorded in the crisis of the Mariel rafters, in 1980, and that of 1994.
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