Cuba received this Thursday (28) a flight from the United States with 61 illegal immigrants deported, which brings to 340 the total number of people returned to the island this year from different countries in 26 operations, according to information from the official Cuban press .
This group, the first to arrive from the US in March, is made up of 52 men, seven women and two minors.
Six of them had left the island by sea, and the rest had left legally and then accessed irregular routes to reach the United States, according to a statement from the Cuban Interior Ministry.
One of the deportees was detained after being returned to Havana because “he had escaped from a prison, where he was serving a sentence for human trafficking”, adds the note.
The United States and Cuba resumed deportation flights for illegal immigrants detained on the border between Mexico and the United States last year.
The first return operation by air was carried out – with 123 people – on April 24, 2023.
The governments of Havana and Washington also have a bilateral agreement that all illegal immigrants arriving in the US by sea will be deported to the Caribbean country.
About 23,000 Cubans arrived in the US in January, according to a report from the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
According to the agency, in four months of fiscal year 2024 – which began on October 1st – 86,139 Cubans entered the United States.
Between January and February this year, Cubans with irregular migration status were also sent back to their country of origin on commercial flights from the Cayman Islands, Bahamas and Dominican Republic.
In 2023, Cuba welcomed back 5,253 citizens, mostly from the United States, but also from countries such as Mexico, Bahamas, Belize, Cayman Islands and the Dominican Republic.
Cuba is experiencing an unprecedented wave of emigration due to the serious economic crisis that the country is suffering, with a severe shortage of basic products (food, medicine and fuel), galloping inflation, frequent energy cuts and a partial dollarization of the economy.
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