The US Coast Guard reported this Thursday of the illegal landing of seven Cubans in the Marathon area, in the Florida Keys. The statement, made through the official Twitter account of the patrol chief, Walter N. Slosar, does not offer data on the identity, sex or age of the migrants.
The detained rafters “arrived in a homemade boat,” Slosar said, and were detected by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and Coast Guard agents.
The Coast Guard reported the arrival of another 32 Cubans who are currently in federal custody.
The month of July begins with several landing attempts on the Florida coast. This Tuesday, the Coast Guard reported the arrival of another 32 Cubans who are currently in federal custody and awaiting possible deportation.
Two days earlier – on July 2 – the Border Patrol stopped to three Cubans who disembarked at Truman Waterfront Park, in Key West.
The successive attempts to cross the Straits of Florida occur mostly in dilapidated boats or made with homemade materials, and find their justification in an economic crisis that hits families due to shortages of food and basic products.
Once they disembark and are apprehended on the US coast, the Coast Guard ensures that the migrants receive food, water and basic medical care. Cubans who manage to make landfall have more opportunities to receive asylum, but rafters who are intercepted in international waters must prove to the officials that they are victims of harassment by the regime to avoid deportation, since Cuba and the US have a bilateral agreement of return to all who arrive by sea.
Until the beginning of June, the Ministry of the Interior reported that more than 3,900 irregular migrants had been returned to the island
USA resumed in April the deportation flights of irregular migrants to Cuba, suspended since 2020. The Ministry of the Interior pointed out at that time that the reactivation of this operation is the “result of bilateral cooperation between Cuba and the United States in immigration matters.”
Until the beginning of June, the Ministry of the Interior reported that more than 3,900 irregular migrants had been returned to the Island so far in 2023, mainly from the United States, Mexico, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.
The United States Government recently granted political asylum to the two Cubans who landed in the Florida Keys in a motorized hang glider last March. David López Alfonso and Ismael Hernández Chirino must remain up to ten more days in the Krome migrant prison in Miami, waiting for the judge who granted them international protection to issue a written sentence.
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