By Julia Ainsley -
NBC News
The Joe Biden government plans to start sending Cuban immigrants whose asylum orders have been denied back to the island on deportation flights, two US officials told NBC News.
The flights will begin "in the coming weeks
," when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) finishes locating
Cubans with final deportation orders, with whom the first planes will be filled.
The Reuters news agency announced last week that the Cuban regime agreed to accept these flights, thus reversing the decision to reject them that it made at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in March 2020, with Donald Trump in the White House.
The last deportation flight from the United States to Cuba left on December 29, 2020, according to Tom Cartwright, an immigration activist who tracks such flights by ICE.
Cuba will accept deported migrants under an agreement reached with the United States after talks held this week in Havana, which also provides for the resumption of visa processing for Cubans seeking to emigrate legally at the Havana embassy.
They disperse a caravan of migrants in Chiapas to prevent them from reaching the US border.
Nov 14, 202200:24
The arrival of Cubans across the Mexican border has increased drastically in the last year, partly because they are not immediately returned under Title 42 (approved by Trump during the pandemic), as is the case with immigrants of other nationalities.
More than 248,000 Cubans were intercepted when crossing the border last fiscal year, compared to the 43,677 registered the previous one, according to figures from border authorities.
Only last October there were 28,848, 10% more than in September, becoming the main migratory source only behind Mexico.
Cuban migrants were allowed to apply for political asylum instead of being returned immediately.
Those who are denied will now be eligible to be deported on these flights.
They will not be returned directly to Mexico, as is the case with Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans and Venezuelans, because the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador does not accept them.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on its plan to resume deportation flights.
The number of people fleeing Cuba has increased in recent months
July 12, 202200:44
The policy known as “dry feet, wet feet”, under which since 1995 the United States has allowed Cubans who reach the coast to stay (as long as they are not intercepted at sea), came to an end in 2017, with the Democrat Barack Obama about to leave the White House.
Until now, the Joe Biden Administration has not coordinated large-scale deportations of Cubans through ICE flights.
However, some Cubans intercepted at sea have been returned to the island.