An 11-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl were among the latest Cuban nationals to be returned to their homeland on Tuesday, 31 Jan., as the government continues its repatriation exercise.
The children, who landed in North Side last month with four other Cubans, were repatriated along with 18 others on a chartered Cayman Airways 737-8 flight from Grand Cayman to Havana.
The flight, which left at 8:15am and arrived in Cuba at 9am, was a joint initiative with the Customs and Border Control Service, Workforce Opportunities and Residency Cayman (WORC) and His Majesty’s Cayman Islands Prison Services (HMCIPS.)
Customs and Border Control, in a statement Tuesday, said the latest batch of repatriated Cubans included 15 males and five females, including the two minors.
This latest repatriation flight follows the departure of 16 male Cubans on a Cayman Airways charter flight last month.
Deputy Premier and Minister of Border Control and Labour Chris Saunders, in a statement on that repatriation flight, pointed to increasing numbers of such flights in 2023 “as we work to expedite the political asylum application process following the passage of the necessary legal amendments”.
“While we collectively have sympathy for the migrants’ economic plight, the Cayman Islands simply cannot absorb these increasing numbers of migrants or afford the burdensome cost of their long-term residence and maintenance here,” Saunders said.
Through those new amendments, six of the 20 who left on Tuesday were processed expeditiously.
“Those amendments facilitate the expedited processing of those migrants who are clearly unqualified for protection under the 1957 Convention on Refugees and its 1967 Protocol as read with the Customs and Border Control Act,” the CBC said in a statement Tuesday.
CBC also said that a Cuban national who had served time in Northward Prison for criminal offences was also repatriated on Tuesday’s flight.
“Irregular migrants are required to comply with the laws of the Cayman Islands. Failure to comply may result in their arrest and conviction on criminal charges. As such, there are currently three migrants who have been remanded to Northward Prison for escaping lawful custody from the CBC Detention Center,” the department added.
Meanwhile, CBC Director Charles Clifford thanked CBC, WORC and prison staff for a successful execution of the repatriation operation to Cuba.
“Such operations are successful because of our strong working relationship with our partner agencies and additional repatriation operations are planned,” he said.
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