U.S. officials want to increase deportation flights to Cuba

ICE wants to increase deportation flights Cuba Resuming direct repatriation flights to Venezuela, according to a statement provided to Venezuela by the agency’s acting director, Patrick J. Lechleitner Miami Herald this week.

“I would love to strengthen them,” the official said, noting Negotiations with the Cuban and Venezuelan governments are ongoing.

That same week, Arrival in Havana The fifteenth expulsion flight this year come from America.

The U.S. Embassy in China released a statement on Thursday, saying that “the flight returned 56 Cubans on the island who had attempted to enter the United States without authorization.”

Lechleitner stressed that the agency must coordinate these efforts in a “very dynamic international environment.”

“There are some countries in the world that are more difficult to deal with. There are a few countries that don’t want to take their citizens. We are constantly working with them to try to convince them to take their citizens,” he explained. “But this is nothing new. This is an ongoing issue that we always have to deal with.”

Deportation flights to Cuba halted during Covid-19 pandemic It was restored last spring.

already There has been an average of 1 flight per month to Cuba in the past 14 monthsTom Cartwright, an independent analyst who has been tracking deportations to the United States for years, said.

In the case of Venezuela, the last deportation flight took place in January, shortly after US government to announce sanctions against Nicolas Maduro regime Preventing many opposition candidates from running.

In May, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processed more than 44,500 people by appointment at U.S. ports of entry using an advanced system to analyze information sent through the CBP One app.

Since the appointment scheduling feature was launched in January 2023, more than 636,600 people had made appointments to appear at entry points by the end of May last year.

The main nationalities of people scheduling appointments are Venezuelan and CubanNext in line are Haitians, Mexicans and Hondurans.

Irregular migrant crossings at the U.S. southern border fell for the third consecutive month in May, with 117,900 apprehensions, a 9% decrease from April, according to CBP data.