The U.S. will resume deporting Cubans who crossed unlawfully into the U.S. from Mexico on flights back to Cuba “in the coming weeks,” two U.S. officials told NBC News.
Previously, the last deportation flight from the U.S. to Cuba happened on December 29, 2020, according to Tom Cartwright, an immigration activist with the advocacy group Witness at the Border, which tracks each U.S. deportation flight by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Deportation flights to Cuba were halted amid the COVID-19 pandemic, though the U.S. did continue to deport a small number of Cubans via commercial airlines, a separate U.S. official told Reuters.
The deportations will continue as Cuba’s government has agreed to accept Cuban returnees for the first time since the pandemic, Reuters reported. The deal was agreed upon through talks between both governments in Havana in early November, the highest-level U.S. visit to the island nation since the historic rapprochement under former President Barack Obama.
The first deportation flight to Havana will occur once ICE locates enough Cubans to fill a plane. Currently, ICE has about a dozen Cubans in custody who failed an initial screening for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.
As part of the deal reached between the two countries to return unlawful migrants to Cuba, visa processing will restart for Cubans seeking to enter the U.S. legally.
The resumption of ICE deportation flights to Cuba could send a symbolic message to would-be unlawful migrants from the country who typically fly to Central America and travel north to the U.S. border.
More than 248,000 Cubans were detained crossing the U.S.-Mexico border over the past year, up from 43,677 the year prior, according to Customs and Border Protection figures. Most were released into the United States to await asylum case hearings.
Cubans intercepted at sea have been returned, however.
Upwards of 5,600 Cuban migrants have been caught at sea thus far this year and sent back to their home country, according to Cuba media reports.
The agreement also comes after the U.S. immigration policy toward Cuba known as “wet foot, dry foot,” which had allowed Cubans who arrived in the U.S. to stay since 1995, ended in 2017.
The Trump administration ramped up the deportations of Cubans, but the Biden administration has yet to coordinate large-scale Cuban deportations through ICE.
In all, U.S. authorities conducted more than 2.2 million unlawful migrant apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border in the fiscal year 2022, more than any other year on record. Of those, about 1 million were quickly expelled to Mexico or other countries under a pandemic-era order known as Title 42. Meanwhile, just 2% of Cubans apprehended at the border were returned in the 2022 fiscal year.