Another Cuban with legal residence in the United States was questioned by immigration authorities at the Miami airport after making three trips to Cuba in a period of three months.
In an audio sent to the journalist Mario J. Pentonthe Cuban (who did not identify himself) told what had happened to him in the immigration offices after returning from his third trip to Cuba, an issue for which he was warned about the possibility of losing his immigration status.
“I obtained my normal residency, I entered with a parole. They gave me residency after about three months. and I withdrew my asylum. So I went to Cuba about a month or two or two months later… I went in January and they gave it to me in November,” explained the Cuban immigrant who did not specify details of his regularization process in the United States.
Regularized in November, the immigrant flew back to the Island in January. He then returned in February, and made one more trip in March, claiming that he “needed” to do so.
“Cuban with closed asylum travels to Cuba and is questioned at the airport. No, it’s not to scare you. The officer is doing his duty and alerting you. “You said in a North American court that you were afraid of returning to Cuba,” Pentón replied on his social networks.
Furthermore, the journalist reminded him that there is a difference between traveling for “humanitarian reasons” and traveling for “tourism.” In that sense, he reminded him that when completing the procedure to regularize his immigration status, he passed the interview credible fear What do they do to Cubans who claim to be fleeing a dictatorship.
“This time he was lucky, but they can withdraw his residence and embark on a legal process,” Pentón concluded in his response.
In the case of this Cuban, Immigration officials detained him upon returning from his third trip in three months and only gave him a warning. According to his testimony, “an officer who was a little confused” told him that he was not informing him of any prohibition, but rather reminding him that he had requested asylum, although he had later ruled it out in favor of another route of immigration regularization.
“I don’t know if it was because I went three times in a row, or why. I just would like to know if it’s to scare me, or if I can’t go, or something like that,” the Cuban asked the journalist.
This is not the first time this has happened: the matter is under scrutiny
His case is similar to that of other Cubans who in recent times have been warned at immigration controls about their frequent trips to Cuba.
At the beginning of March, a Cuban with I-220A who obtained her residency through the Cuban Adjustment Act revealed that upon returning from a recent trip to Cuba at the Miami Airport an Immigration officer threatened her with the possibility of losing her residence if she continued traveling to the Island.
In statements to the journalist Javier Diaz for Univision, the woman explained that she had applied for residency through a political asylum case but later closed that file once she obtained her residency through I-220A. However, the officer was emphatic when telling him that anyone who enters through the border should not return to Cuba.
“He told me that I won the residency and immediately left for Cuba, that we were lying here to the American authorities. She told me that here every Cuban who enters through the border, whether the court is closed or not, is lying, that how can we return to the country we were fleeing from,” said the woman, who also preferred to hide her identity.
At the end of February, the testimony of a Cuban who had been residing in the United States for almost 18 years and received a similar warning from an Immigration officer after returning from a trip to the Island with his wife and children emerged.
Despite telling him that he had entered by boat, that he had accepted the Cuban Adjustment Law and that he had been in the United States for almost 18 years, where he had Green Card permanente, The immigration officer insisted on recommending that he not return to the island.
He also clarified that even if he became an American citizen, citizenship can also be removed through fraud. The family that experienced that incident had traveled an average of eight or nine times in the last six years.
“It’s no surprise, we have been talking about this issue for months. Nobody wants to create panic, but we are alerting people to what is happening,” said the lawyer. Jose Guerrero consulted about these warnings that some Cubans are receiving.
The frequent trips to Cuba of Cuban immigrants who allege “credible fear” in regularization processes (whether they have been resolved, or discarded in favor of taking advantage of another route such as parole) are in the sights of politicians and officials of the US administration.
Mayorkas promised to clarify the legal implications of the matter
In November of last year, the US senator Marco Rubio He questioned the situation of Cubans who are welcomed as refugees in the United States and then travel to Cuba, a country from which they supposedly fled political persecution.
Addressing the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alexander Mayorkasthe senator raised the case of Cubans who acquire refugee status in the United States and a year later are on vacation in Cuba, a country from which they supposedly fled for political reasons.
“If you are fleeing persecution, how can it be that a year later you are spending your summers in Cuba? How can it be that less than a year later you are traveling, say, six to eight times a year to Cuba? I have never heard of people fleeing persecution and returning to one place repeatedly. “There is a problem here, right?” Rubio asked Mayorkas.
Claiming to know this situation first-hand, Rubio explained to Mayorkas the “privileges” enjoyed by Cuban refugees and the practices they carry out protected by them, such as sending aid money to Cuba (food stamps), or the possibility of staying up to three months in the country from which they supposedly fled, among others.
“If a year later you are here as a refugee, but you return to Cuba six times, Shouldn’t you at least lose your refugee status?Rubio asked the Secretary of Homeland Security.
Mayorkas promised Rubio that he would study the matter and offer a response based on the legal arguments surrounding the issue..
