Despite the arrests and deportations, the flow of Cuban rafters does not stop
14ymedio, Havana August 2, 2024 — The United States temporarily suspended travel permits for those who have received humanitarian parole for alleged “significant levels of fraud.” The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to Martí Noticias, stopped the trips “as a precaution” until the results of a report are clarified and warned of irregularities in the process. Washington must review the irregular requests of the sponsors – which seem to be the crux of the matter – to make sure that the forms for the beneficiaries of parole are in order. The sponsors’ documents contained social security numbers, addresses and telephone numbers that had been used on hundreds of similar applications.
The DHS “has mechanisms to detect and prevent fraud in our immigration processes. We take any abuse very seriously,” an unidentified spokesman for the Department told Martí Noticias. “When a fraud is identified, the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service) investigates and takes the cases to the immigration courts, in addition to referring them to the Department of Justice.
“We will restart the processing as soon as possible, with the appropriate safeguards,” the official said.
“We will restart the processing as soon as possible, with the appropriate safeguards,” the official said.
Since January of last year, the humanitarian parole program has helped 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and – since earlier months – Venezuela. As of last May, 105,000 Cubans had received parole, and 98,200 of them had arrived in the United States.
For its part, the American network Fox News said that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office (CB
