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Cuba agrees to accept US deportation flights

Cuba has agreed for the first time since the pandemic to accept U.S. deportation flights carrying Cubans captured on the border with Mexico, three U.S. officials told Reuters. The change in stance could give the United States a new but limited tool to reduce record numbers of illegal immigrants.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has about a dozen Cubans in custody who failed an initial asylum screening at the border, officials said, requesting anonymity to discuss the diplomatic situation. The US agency is waiting until it has enough Cuban deportees to fill a plane before sending one to Havana, they said.

A third source familiar with the matter said there was no new formal agreement for scheduled deportation flights, but that Cuba had agreed to accept occasional groups of deportees.

Regular deportations of Cubans came to a halt during the Covid-19 pandemic, although the United States continues to deport small numbers of Cubans through commercial airlines.

The US State Department, the White House and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

About 1,500 Cubans were removed in fiscal 2020, which began on October 1, 2019, the year scheduled deportation flights were halted, according to data from the US Department of Homeland Security.

The resumption of ICE deportation flights to Cuba could send a symbolic message to would-be migrants who normally fly to Central America and travel north to the border. A record 220,000 Cubans were captured at the US-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022, which ended on September 30. The vast majority were released in the United States to investigate immigration cases.

Communist-controlled Cuba is obliged by previous migration agreements to accept its citizens returned by the United States. The most recent bilateral agreement was reached in January 2017, just before then-President Barack Obama left office.

The US Coast Guard has continued to turn around migrants caught at sea and has repatriated more than 5,600 migrants so far this year, according to official Cuban media reports.

Top US immigration officials visited Havana this week – the highest-profile US visit since the historic rapprochement under former President Obama – as the migration crisis worsens.

US authorities made more than 2.2 million migrant arrests at the US-Mexico border in fiscal 2022, more than any year on record. Of those, about 1 million were quickly expelled to Mexico or other countries under a pandemic-era order known as Title 42. But only 2% of Cubans stranded at the border were expelled in fiscal 2022.

Source: CNN Brasil

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