Today, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) returned a group of 19 irregular migrants from several countries including Cuba who were trying to reach US territory through two different operations. The USCG, in a post posted on its X account, stated that the special operation was carried out jointly with other agencies of the Homeland Security Task Force Southeast (HSTF Southeast).
With the publication, the authorities seek to raise awareness among irregular migrants to avoid as much as possible entering the United States illegally, mainly by using the sea route that has claimed so many lives. To get the message across, as is customary, they used the hashtag "#DontTakeToTheSea."
The information was also shared with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, who also support safe and orderly migration to prevent the loss of human lives and phenomena such as human trafficking.
The efforts of the US authorities to prevent the arrival of migrants by sea have been constant and to this end all necessary means have been deployed to detect from the air and at sea any vessel that illegally transports rafters from any country.
In this regard, they have indicated that when security forces intercept irregular migrants at sea or near their coasts, they will be provided with the care established by the United Nations for these cases and at the same time they will be returned to their respective countries and will not be welcomed in the United States for a period of five years.
This is one of several variants that the US government uses to prevent people from setting out to sea to reach the Florida Keys in rustic boats. Many of these incidents end in the best of cases with deportations to countries such as the Bahamas in this case, but in recent years thousands of lives have been lost at sea as a result of these maritime crossings.
In a statement posted on Instagram by the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, on Friday, it warned migrants that regardless of the outcome of the November 5 election, the country's immigration laws remained the same as at the time and no immediate changes were anticipated.
They also clarified that, as has been happening until now, those who try to reach ports of entry illegally will be immediately repatriated to their countries. With these measures, the government of Washington seeks to reduce as much as possible the sea crossings that each year claim the lives of so many people who seek to live in freedom.
According to a note from the Cuban Ministry of the Interior (MININT), a flight from the United States arrived at the José Martí International Airport in the Cuban capital on Tuesday with a total of 24 migrants, including a woman. The day before this flight, the US Coast Guard had transferred four irregular migrants to the Port of Orozco in Bahía Honda.
