(14ymedio/EFE).- The first week of January, Landry González along with 16 other Cubans disembarked in Florida. The American dream that he thought he had achieved seems still far away. According to him he told voice of americathey did not give him the opportunity for a credible fear interview, they gave him a release order that establishes conditions such as attending immigration court hearings.
“I was unlucky that they gave me the I-220A,” lamented the 38-year-old Cuban. “Three friends who arrived a year ago and gave them parole, my brother who arrived in 2016, he received all the benefits,” he told the same outlet.
Since the beginning of the year, the rafters who manage to make landfall have been given an expedited order of deportation, the verdict that a judge issues for expulsion of a person but that can be reversed with legal advice. This order has an expiration period of 60 days. Hence, many Cubans do not know if they will really be deported or will be able to opt for another solution because that time period has not yet expired.
Regarding the I-220A form, the Immigration attorney, Rosaly Chaviano, explained that people can request to be “an asylum case, try to prove a case of credible fear, but they will be pending asylum, renewing their permits job every two years, until they eventually have their interview date, if they approve it.
The US has reiterated since the end of last year that any rafters who are detained on their journey would be returned to their country of origin. In mid-January, the Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States, Alejandro Mayorkas, insisted: “Cubans and Haitians who go to sea and land in the US will not be eligible for the parole process and will be subject to deportation proceedings.”
We flew along with the Coast Guard on one of their life saving missions as they searched for migrants in distress in the Florida Straits @USCGSoutheast @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/upHKoU4lgR
— Cristian Benavides (@cbenavidesTV) February 8, 2023
This Tuesday the US Coast Guard repatriated aboard the ship issac mayo to 16 Cubans. According to official figures, since October 1, 2022, the US authorities have frustrated the crossing of 5,576 rafters.
The agency stressed that the “crews that patrol the Straits of Florida, the Windward and Mona Passages prevented more than 100 rafters” from disembarking in the US between January 27 and February 3. This Wednesday the Coast Guard shared a video of the overflights that are carried out to locate migrants on the high seas.
Some of these attempts by Cubans to reach the US have ended in the Bahamas. The Royal Defense Force reported that last Thursday
We flew along with the Coast Guard on one of their life saving missions as they searched for migrants in distress in the Florida Straits @USCGSoutheast @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/upHKoU4lgR
— Cristian Benavides (@cbenavidesTV) February 8, 2023” _mce_href=”https://mce_host/content/edit/
We flew along with the Coast Guard on one of their life saving missions as they searched for migrants in distress in the Florida Straits @USCGSoutheast @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/upHKoU4lgR
— Cristian Benavides (@cbenavidesTV) February 8, 2023
” target=”_blank”>seven island nationals were arrested. These people “were on a ship anchored under the name of The friends on the west side of Andros”.
According to official data, 59 Cubans have been detained in the Bahamas so far. This Tuesday the Telemundo journalist, Jany Gonzalez, shared on her social networksthat 31 of these people who left the Island on December 31 in a raft, have already been presented before the Court and are waiting to be deported.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported Tuesday that the number of arrests of migrants attempting to cross the southern border of the United States irregularly reached its lowest point in two years in January.
The authorities attribute this decrease to the expansion at the beginning of January of Title 42, a controversial health regulation, to allow the “hot” expulsions of Haitian, Cuban and Nicaraguan migrants.
As of January 31, arrests of people of these three nationalities, along with Venezuelans, who have been subject to Title 42 since October, decreased to an average of 95 per day, a 95% drop compared to the 1,231 daily arrests that were reported earlier this month, a DHS official said.
“In January we saw the lowest number of Border Patrol arrests since February 2021,” the official stressed.
The use of Title 42 by the Joe Biden government has been widely criticized by human rights organizations and even some members of the Democratic Party.
“On the ground, at the border, it is very clear that many people of those four nationalities are waiting on the Mexican side and desperately trying to get an appointment (with the CBP One asylum applicationwhich cannot meet the demand,” Yael Schacher, director for the Americas and Europe of the International Rescue Committee organization, told EFE.
Many people, in his opinion, are in danger or distress and risk crossing the border incognito rather than turn themselves in, as they would have done before they were subject to Title 42.
At the end of January, a group of 80 Democratic congressmen, led by Senator Robert Menéndez, called for reversing the decision to expel people from Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti who cross the border with Mexico. “Title 42 is a mockery of national and international law.”
The Biden government has defended itself against criticism, assuring that it has to continue applying that program by order of the Supreme Court, which in December accepted a petition from twenty Republican-governed states and determined that Title 42 should remain active.
In addition to expanding the regulations, which restrict access to asylum at the border, the government plans to impose a five-year ban on people who cross the border irregularly from entering the United States.
The regulation, inherited from the term of former President Donald Trump (2017-2021), has allowed more than 2.5 million arrests since it came into force in 2020, according to data from the International Rescue Committee.
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