http://www.thenews.com.mx/home/tnhome.asp?cve_home=734 "Cubans sent home under new accord By JULIE WATSON Associated Press Mexico sent home the first group of illegal Cuban migrants under a new accord aimed at cutting off an increasingly violent human-trafficking route to the United States, the government said Thursday. The 41 migrants left the resort city of Cancún aboard a Mexican Navy ship taking them back to Cuba, a statement from the Navy and the Interior Secretariat said. Before Mexico signed the agreement with Cuba in October, authorities rarely sent migrants back to the communist island. Until now, Cubans were detained briefly in Mexico, then given 10- to 30-day exit orders. That allowed them to continue on to Texas, where all that is required of Cuban migrants are identity documents and medical and background checks before they are welcomed to the United States. As it became harder to dodge U.S. Coast Guard vessels and reach Florida by sea to qualify for U.S. residency, Cuban migrants in recent years have increasingly chosen Mexico - often heading to the coast near Cancún - as their route to the United States. But the government has become frustrated with the migrations as violent traffickers increasingly got involved in moving them across the country. Several Cuban-Americans believed to be involved in smuggling have been killed in recent years in or around Cancún, about 120 miles (195 kilometers) southwest of Cuba. In June, gunmen snatched 33 Cubans off a government bus headed to an immigration station in Chiapas, possibly to extort money from them or their smugglers. Many of those migrants later turned up in the United States. The government now provides armed police escorts for all detained Cuban migrants. Immigration authorities can still grant asylum on a case-by-case basis to migrants under the accord, which has no guarantee that those returned to Cuba will not face reprisals."
I have it on the sly that INM was extremely careful about how they conducted this deportation. They were concerned that certain mafia elements would try to free the deportees so they gave mis-leading info out and told agents very little about how they were moving these people. Seems like they did it properly.
Yep...top secret--and everything was filmed and photographed. It will be interesting to see now if this will effectively end the human trafficking through Mexico. Certainly sounds too easy and good to be true but time will tell.
I'll be watching to see how Cuba treats these folks... if I don't hear anything, I'm assuming that they've been jailed or worst.. but if Cuba is smart they will make a real big public show greeting these deportees with open arms instead of an iron fist.... course' that doesn't mean that they wont "punish" them later or on a quieter scale "under the radar".... In general I think that this is a misguided attempt by Mexican politicians to look as if they are fighting the "Cuban mafia", but I think we are all smart enough to know that its just a show.... much like the "Military Check Points" on the highways where they just randomly stop car and briefly search them... without a drug/munition sniffing dog or any other signs that they are making a serious attempt to find anything... nabbing just the occasional little fish that makes the news and is paraded around as the biggest catch ever....while everything else gets waved thru.....
Personally I don't think the new rules will stop the flow of immigrants from Cuba wanting to go to the US through Mexico. It might slow it a bit, but that's it. It might make the smugglers more nervous, it might make everything cost more and be more dangerous. As far as I understand Cuba has not been incarcerating people deported back to Cuba from Mexico. Or rather if they are it's not for long because INM has seen the same Cubans being caught more than once. And the intervals aren't long. So people get caught in Mexico, thrown back and then are caught just a few weeks later again. So jail time in Cuba, if any, is short.
Cubans have been arriving to the Cancun shores for many years but probably not 50 a year until a few years ago when organized crime made it easier if not cheaper for a great number (probably 50 a month) to arrive to our shores and when Mexico basically adopted the same old "wet foot, dry foot" policy of the U.S. and permitted them to stay and work their way north where they could pass easily across the border. And with the $5,000-$15,000 usd per person each that they charged, there was more than enough to make it easier for everyone involved. If they continue to "repatriate" the Cubans, it will/should have a negative effect on the trafficking and hopefully the murders and other "collateral damage" involved that negatively affect Cancun. One can always hope.
Heard well-informed speculation today that the smugglers will try to send Cubans directly to the state Tamaulipas (it borders Texas) by boat rather than having them land here and then travel across Mexico via land. That would certainly cut down on the potential for bad stuff to happen in this area.
