Photo: Monroe Sheriff’s Office / Courtesy
By: The opinion Posted Mar 26, 2023, 1:33 pm EDT
Two Cubans were detained on Saturday at the Key West International Airportsouth Florida, after they arrived aboard a powered hang glider.
Adam Linhartd, spokesman for the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, reported that the two Cuban citizens they landed at 10:30 am local time, after a flight of less than two hours.
They were later turned over to Border Patrol.
Miami media identified the two Cuban immigrants as David López Alfonso and Ismael Hernández Chirino, who they flew in from the coast of Havana province and now face deportation.
Ismael’s sister said in an interview for Telemundo that the families of both did not know what they were planning and asked the United States authorities not to return them to Cuba.
“They made commercial flights for tourism and with some Cubans who could afford it,” Laura Hernández Chirino told Telemundo.
“If they are returned to the problem that they are going to look for, it has no word, it does not compare with anything. The problem they are going to find is going to be gigantic, they will never be able to be anyone else in their lives”, said the sister of one of the two pilots.
The Border Patrol He limited himself to informing his networks of the detention of migrants without giving details and thanking the Monroe Sheriff’s Office for their collaboration.
Residents of the area managed to capture the two men on video during the flight, moments before landing on the key.
the tourist island of key west It is located a hundred miles (160 kilometers) from Cuba and is like the rest of the Florida Keys an area where the rudimentary boats disembark in which they leave the neighboring country.
Arrivals by air, like today’s, are not common.
In October 2002, a Cuban pilot at the controls of an old Russian-made Antonov single-engine plane landed at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, located in the middle of the immense Everglades wetland.
In fiscal year 2022 (October 1, 2021 through September 30, 2022), a total of 6,182 Cuban migrants were intercepted in the waters of the Florida Straitsa figure well above the 838 detainees the previous fiscal period.
So far in the current fiscal year, starting on October 1, 2022, 5,862 Cubans have been intercepted, a high figure considering that of the entire previous fiscal year.
Cubans have also been arriving in record numbers since 2021 at the land border with Mexico, but since January they have a humanitarian program that allows beneficiaries to enter and work in the United States for two years if they have a sponsor who takes responsibility for them. economically.
The measure, which also applies to Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Haitians, aims to prevent massive arrivals of immigrants at the border.
So far in 2023, according to Cuban media reports this week, the number of irregular migrants returned to Cuba amounts to 2,798, of which 2,008 left the United States.
With information from EFE
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