Washington, D.C. (April 4, 2022) – The Center for Immigration Studies reports a news story widely reported in Spanish-language media, but not in U.S. media. Cuba and Nicaragua have opened a new air passageway to the U.S. southern border, allowing thousands of U.S.-bound Cubans have poured through the shortcut, while tens of thousands more are reportedly lining up daily in Havana for tickets,
according to Spanish-language media reporting. The two governments
cut the new deal for visa-free travel in November.
The Biden administration is now preparing to manage a massive anticipated surge of
as many as 18,000 migrant crossings a day, or 540,000 per month, after May 23. That is the date it is scheduled to lift the last vestiges of Trump-era CDC “Title 42” pandemic entry restrictions, which have resulted in the expulsion of some 1.7 million illegal immigrant border crossers-- including Cubans-- to Mexico.
Todd Bensman, the Center’s senior national security fellow and author of the article, explained, “The November Havana-Managua deal neatly coincides with a major spike in U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions of Cubans at the Southwest Border. Recent apprehension numbers have tripled with 16,550 Cubans arriving in February. I expect the March numbers will be much higher now that Cubans have a May 23 date for when they can go over the line and find more of a welcome than they might get with Title 42 in place.”
DHS
releases most Cubans into the country on special humanitarian parole slips. Their release on humanitarian parole lures even more Cubans seeking humanitarian parole, which draws greater numbers… And so forth.
Other secretive U.S. efforts to have foreign proxies undermine the Cuban flights and flow far south of the border are not working.
“Rather than to array forces to stop, block, deter and take asylum off the table, Biden’s DHS appears to be marshalling resources – people, transportation, housing, medical services --
to expand its capability to usher in all comers as smoothly as possible, vaccinate them against Covid-19, and then release them on humanitarian parole into the American interior as eventual ‘asylum seekers’ asked to self-report later to an immigration office”, Bensman explains.
