Cuba no longer accepts its own citizens who are deported from the United States

The number of Cubans arriving in the United States is reminiscent of the times of the Mariel crisis, in the 1980s, or the mass exodus of the 90s during the so-called special period on the island.

According to official data from the United States government, at least 46,000 Cubans arrived at the southern border of the country seeking asylum since the beginning of the current fiscal year, on October 1, 2021.

In the last six months, at least, Cuba has not accepted back its citizens who were deported from the United States. From last October until now, 20 Cuban citizens have accepted a voluntary deportation from the United States, but were not allowed to re-enter their country. In addition, during the same period, Cuba also did not accept Cubans that the United States Department of Immigration and Customs (ICE) had deported on its own.

In these types of deportations, the United States contracts charter flights to send people to the island. The Cuban government does not accept such flights, according to the Miami Herald newspaper.

When the Obama administration established a dialogue with the dictatorial communist regime in Cuba, they repealed the so-called Dry Feet, Wet Feet law, which granted immediate residence to every Cuban who touched U.S. soil, and agreed with the island to deport all those who arrived without legal documentation.

For several years this type of deportations took place, but everything stopped in March 2020 with the beginning of the pandemic. The Cuban government closed its borders, not allowing deportees or anyone else to enter, briefly reopened them in October 2020 and then closed them again until November 2021.

To understand the difference in numbers, during the first half of 2020 (which is actually the first three months because everything closed in March), the United States had deported 1,583 Cuban citizens. In all of 2021, only 95 Cubans were deported, to whom the island's government closed the front door.

Cubans do not fall under the so-called Title 42 of the United States, the rule imposed during the pandemic that allows the country to carry out rapid deportations of those who arrive at the border without documents claiming that the country cannot receive people from countries where there is a contagious virus. Under this rule, 63,439 Guatemalans, 56,958 Hondurans and 6,758 Haitians were quickly deported between October last year and February of this year, but no Cubans, according to official ICE data.

But this does not mean that Cubans cannot be deported from the United States. Although by spending a year and a day on U.S. soil Cubans can apply for residency under the Cuban adjustment law, many are left on the road. In fact, as of the end of March of this year, there were 40,450 Cubans awaiting a final sentence of deportation, far more than the nearly 36,000 who were deported in 2017.

The authorities of the Havana regime excuse themselves from accepting their own citizens on the grounds that the United States did not comply with its commitment to grant 20,000 immigrant visas a year to Cubans, as promised by Obama, and to make legal migration more difficult by suspending consular services in Havana in 2017.

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