Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos Fernandez de Cossio has said that a proposal by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for mass deportation of immigrants living unlawfully in the United States is unrealistic and unfair, especially given that this may affect Cubans.
Trump had promised a massive immigration crackdown, with the aim to deport 1 million immigrants a year.
Any deportation proposal must be vetted within the bounds of existing migration agreements between the United States and Cuba, according to Cuba’s deputy foreign minister to reporters. And under existing accords, Cuba has accepted small numbers of deportations from the U.S. by air and by sea during the Biden administration.
Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan has clarified that these deportations would focus on criminals and those given final deportation orders, but he did not comment on exemptions for specific groups or nationalities.
A U.S. delegation had met Cuban officials in Havana to review the U.S.-Cuba Migration Accords on Wednesday, – records of which date back to 1984, according to Brian Nichols, the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America on X.
At the time of filing this report, it is unclear whether Trump would play by the existing accords with Cuba or look to renegotiate them, as he is known to do in other circumstances.
Cuba has comsistently blamed the U.S. Cold War-era trade embargo for decimating its economy and encouraging the mass migration of Cubans to the United States for decades but “a large-scale deportation to send them back home would be drastic and unfair,” according to de Cossio ..
Immigrant advocates have also, warned that an increased Trump deportation effort would be expensive, divisive and inhumane, and could cause family separations and wreck primary communities.
