14ymedio, Havana, 21 March 2023 — Data provided by the United States Border Patrol indicate that from October last year to March of this year, 116,878 Cubans have been arrested on the border between the United States and Mexico. However, the data for January (6,433) and February (753) indicate a drastic reduction in illegal entry since the humanitarian parole policy came into effect.
The head of the Border Patrol, Raúl Ortiz, specified that in the last five months, US officers have arrested 900,590 irregular migrants, with Cubans being the second largest group to cross the border after Mexicans (225,476).
Although US authorities have insisted that there has been a decrease in the crossing of Cubans since the Biden Administration launched the so-called humanitarian parole last January, the numbers of Island nationals who crossed illegally and surrendered to the Border Patrol are still significant, with 6,433. Forty percent of these people were expelled.
Ortiz highlighted on his social networks that this group and 753 other Cubans, who were returned to Mexico in February, lost eligibility for the CBP One program.
According to figures from the Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP), 44,069 Cubans were handed over to the US authorities in December 2022.
During the hearing on March 15, which took place in Texas and was organized by the U.S. National Security Committee, Ortiz warned that some areas of the agency he directs “face a crisis situation” due to the “challenges” represented by the “migration flow.”
Republican Mark Green, president of the National Security Committee of the US House of Representatives, attributed part of this migration crisis to the Mexican cartels. “They are earning billions by bringing people to the United States, many of whom have to pay with forced criminal labor.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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