15 Undocumented Cubans Detained in Colombia / 14ymedio

Cubans detained in Saldaña, Colombia. (Ondas de Ibagué)
Cubans detained in Saldaña, Colombia. (Ondas de Ibagué)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, 7 December 2015 – Ten Cuban citizens, between 22 and 38 years old, were detained this Monday in the city of Saldaña, Colombia, in a routine search of a bus on the Neiva-Medillín route, according to local sources.

The foreigners, natives of Havana, Cuba, were identified as Yanelis Pacheco Rodríguez, Raciel Hernández Santana, Adrián Rodríguez Blanco, Adrián González Díaz, Manuel Antonio Pereira Clara, Luis Pimentel Fernández, Adolfo José Yero Castro, Álvaro Leosbel Valdez Pacheco, Geonnis Dupuy Betancourt and Vladimir Pupo Gómez.

The Cubans carried passports with entry stamps for the province of Guayaquil, Ecuador and, according to the police who stopped them, did not carry documents for traveling in a regular way through Colombia. The migrants were taken to the Migration Department, and are waiting there for a solution.

Another five Cubans were arrested on Monday at a checkpoint at the city of Caldas, while travelling illegally on the Estrella-Manizales highway to Medellín.

According to official figures, since the beginning of this year up to the first week of December, more than 600 migrants had been intercepted in Colombia without their paperwork in order, almost 500 of them of Cuban nationality. The remainder of the immigrants were from China, Venezuela, Bangladesh, India, Somalia, Pakistan, Nepal and Ghana.