The authorities of Mexico and the Bahamas deported 65 Cuban migrants who were in those countries in an irregular situation.
According to the Ministry of the Interior (MININT), the migrants arrived on two flights that were made on Friday and Saturday.
“With these returns, there were 114 made from different countries in the region until this year, for a total of 4,607 people returned, said the organization on Twitter.
Mexico resumed deportation flights to Cuba on Saturday, October 14, with the shipment to Havana of 138 migrants (95 men and 43 women) from Tapachula.
Deportation flights from the Aztec nation stopped on March 3.
“All of these people left Cuba legally and participated in irregular traffic to the United States,” MININT reported at the time.
One of the deportees, Yurisleydis Gómez, reported upon arrival in Cuba that there were people in the group who already had their humanitarian visas in Mexico and their appointments with CBP One were scheduled, and that he was mistreated and cheated by Mexican immigration authorities.
“I was shocked; I still can’t believe this happened to me. They arrested me, put me in the tent, and took my passport. They kept me sitting there for about three hours,” he described.
Finally, they put him and another Cuban in a cage and took him to the Siglo XXI immigration station in Tapachula. There, they were mistreated and forced to sign documents by lawyers and officials with false information about their background and their willingness to be deported.
“At 1 o’clock in the morning, they took us…) A group of hooded people, with balaclavas, took us to some buses. In the buses, while we were sitting there, they took our hands to the point where we couldn’t move. I have swollen and burned hands,” he said.
“They put us on the plane; they treated us like dogs. I don’t know, I don’t understand anything; I have papers; I have Comar papers; many people have visas; the scheduled appointment…” he added.
More than 200,000 Cubans entered the United States through its land borders in the recently ended fiscal year 2023 (FY2023), according to official figures released on Saturday.
The Department of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detailed in its year-end report that from October 1, 2022, to September 30, 200,287 Cubans sought political asylum in the territory of the United States.
In 2023, September was the month with the highest influx of Cubans to US borders, with a total of 15,677 citizens of the island. August, June, and January also exceeded 10,000 border encounters.
