(Havana) About 100 irregular Cuban migrants deported from the United States arrived in Havana on Monday, the first flight of this type since 2020, the Cuban Ministry of the Interior announced.
“A flight from the United States with irregular migrants took place this Monday, April 24, a first since December 2020, with 123 people” on board, the ministry said in a statement.
These expulsions come as the communist island, plunged into a serious economic crisis, is experiencing an unprecedented wave of migration. In 2022 alone, more than 300,000 Cubans entered the United States illegally, according to US authorities.
Faced with this influx, Washington implemented new measures at the beginning of 2023 which regulate entry into its territory with a maximum of 30,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan nationals admitted each month.
According to the American authorities, at the beginning of March, approximately 10,000 Cubans had already benefited from this program for which candidates for emigration must apply from their country of origin, have a sponsor in the United States and arrive by plane.
Deportation flights for Cuban migrants not allowed to stay in the United States had been suspended due to the pandemic.
By relaunching the dialogue on the migration issue in 2022, Washington and Havana had agreed to a resumption of these flights in order to encourage “legal, safe and orderly” migration.
Among the illegal Cubans who arrived at José Marti International Airport on Monday were “83 migrants arrested at the border” between Mexico and the United States and “40 balseros”, those migrants who cross the Florida Strait on board boats of fortune, “arrested on the coasts” of the United States.
According to the Department of the Interior, since the beginning of the year, the US Coast Guard has carried out 37 deliveries of irregular migrants by sea, in addition to Monday’s deportation, for a total of 2,514 Cubans deported. .
Other countries in the region carried out over the same period 64 handovers of expelled migrants, i.e. 3,411 people, according to the same source.