Cuban Julio César Aspiazu Gómez has been detained since last Friday in Kinney County, near Brackettville (Texas), for the crime of human trafficking. The authorities confirmed to 14ymedio that the man was driving a vehicle in which he was transporting five undocumented immigrants and is waiting to be brought to trial.
The excessive speed with which Aspiazu Gómez was driving the car was the reason why some officers signaled him to stop. When they asked him for his documentation, he identified himself as a US resident, but the five people who accompanied him could not prove their identity. legal stay, for which they were handed over to the Border Patrol to be returned to Mexico.
According to Sheriff Brad Coe’s office, “it is not uncommon for drug cartel organizations to take individuals who have been smuggled into the United States to use as coyotes to smuggle others” as a way to pay off the debt they owed. have with criminal groups.
Authorities in Kinney County, near Brackettville, are investigating smuggling rings that are using Cubans and other foreigners to smuggle migrants.
Sheriff Brad Coe has a history of a Cuban trafficker, identified as Odlanier, who was arrested on April 6 in Zavala County, Texas. This native of the Island is accused of carrying four migrants of Mexican origin hidden inside a truck.
Other cases were Rainel Lázaro Silies and Lima Gálvez González, who were arrested on April 18 in Kinney, Texas. Coe lamented that the county “is plagued with human and drug smuggling.” The arrest of Silies and Gálvez occurred in the town of Brackettville, when they were transporting five undocumented immigrants in a vehicle with Kentucky license plates.
On the other hand, this Wednesday, 20 Cuban rafters were returned by air from the Bahamas and Cayman Islands. The Ministry of the Interior reported that with these arrivals, there are 3,879 people returned from various countries.
The authorities detailed that on the flight from the Bahamas on May 30, 16 people were returned (11 men, four women and two minors). Among the group was a Cuban who was on probation for compliance with criminal sanctions when he left the country illegally, for which he was “made available to the corresponding courts for the revocation of said benefit.”
Throughout 2023, there have been 77 return operations with 3,879 returnees from countries in the area with which bilateral migration agreements are in place, the authorities specified. Most of them come from the United States with almost 3,000, it was indicated.
Cuba and the US have an agreement so that all migrants who arrive by sea are returned to the island.
In addition, both countries agreed last November to resume deportation flights for “inadmissible” migrants held at the border with Mexico.
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