Miami/As if it were a regular flight of deportees, the Ministry of the Interior reported on its networks the arrival at the José Martí International Airport in Havana, this Thursday, of 116 irregular migrants from the United States “in compliance with bilateral migration agreements.” The brief note allows itself the same bureaucratic tone that it always has, such as indicating the total number of those returned to the Island so far this year (302), or the tagline: “The Cuban authorities have ratified their commitment to regular, safe and orderly migration, while reiterating the danger and life-threatening conditions that illegal departures from the country represent.”
However, nothing is usual in this deportation. First, because the normal thing is one flight a month, and the previous one occurred just last February 9. But they were also deceived. “Everyone on that flight thought I was going to Mexico, because that’s what they had been told,” denounces a relative of one of the migrants who arrived today in the Cuban capital, with one hand in front and one behind.
“Here in Miami the mother is screaming, she doesn’t know what to do, because suddenly he called her from Havana,” this source continues. “They arrived without money, they arrived with nothing and there they are all lying in the Villanueva terminal, waiting for a ticket to the province.”
“They arrived without money, they arrived with nothing and there they are all lying in the Villanueva terminal, waiting for a ticket to the province”
Another woman tells the case of another known passenger, a Cuban from the provinces who had been imprisoned by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) for eight months after losing her asylum case. “They gave her a deportation letter and she signed for Mexico, because she said that it was better there than in Cuba, no matter what happened,” says this close source. A little over a month ago, they transferred their friend from the detention center where she was to Louisiana, and before putting her on the plane that would expel her, they read her deportation papers again. “There it said very clearly that it was for Mexico.”
The next thing the daughter of this deportee knew was that she was, like the relative of the first source, at the Villanueva station.
Unlike several of the 170 deported last week, none of these migrants had committed any crime, and they had been residing in the United States for between four and five years, after entering with the form I-220Awhich would end up leaving them for practical purposes in an immigration limbo.
“They were workers like me, and their only crime was having received the damn I-220A at the border instead of a parole”
“They were workers like me, and their only crime was having received the damn I-220A at the border instead of a parole”, laments Pedro, who arrived in Miami from Havana along the “volcano route”, via Nicaraguaand that he hoped that, with the arrival of Donald Trump to power and the repeal of Joe Biden’s immigration measures – the parole humanitarian and entry to US soil with the app CBP Onewhich was not at his disposal when he entered, in 2021–, will regularize his situation.
On the contrary, these days you are experiencing a situation of maximum stress and anxiety. “I see myself preparing my suitcases, and just today my Cuban passport expired,” laments the young man, who has a wife and three children.
In this regard, he assures that many in his situation are choosing to go to Mexico without delay. “They ask to close their courts for voluntary departure, they exploit credit cards and cross the border back with a little money to survive for a while,” he details.
Pedro is concerned that the supposed dialogue between the United States and Cuba, in the middle of the oil blockade imposed after the intervention in Venezuela, implies that the life they have built these years, with so much effort, will be destroyed and they will be sent back to a country where they no longer want to live. “If the negotiations with Cuba are about this, then what a rubbish negotiation,” he concludes.
