14ymedio/EFE, Havana, December 31, 2023 — A few hours before the end of 2023, the Ministry of the Interior reported that, in the last 12 months, 5,253 Cubans have been deported by air and sea from different countries in the region. Last Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard returned nine rafters to Cuba on the ship Charles David Jr.
Among these deportations are those carried out by the United States. The most recent transfer flight to José Martí International Airport was last Thursday, with 31 Cubans who were arrested at the border.
According to Prensa Latina, in this group, made up of two women and 29 men, there were three people who had left the country illegally by sea. The rest, it reported, did so legally but “then took irregular routes to the U.S. border.”
Under the bilateral agreement between Cuba and the United States to return to the Island those who arrive by sea, eight transfers occurred to repatriate 426 Cubans since last April, when air expulsions resumed.
This year, Cuba has also received repatriated migrants from the Bahamas, Belize, the Cayman Islands, the Dominican Republic and Mexico
The first flight with this type of deportees arrived in Havana on April 24, with 123 people. On the last day of November, 37 Cubans were deported. Yoan Enríquez, who had a probation form I-220B, was one of the passengers who had to leave his wife and a three-month-old baby in
