US Hopes to Return 35,000 Criminals to Cuba
Fernando Ravsberg*
HAVANA TIMES — While the Cuban flag is hoisted on the building of the new embassy in Washington D.C. today, the US Congress continues to put obstacles in the way of normalization of bilateral relations. Now they want to send 35,000 Cuban criminals back to the island.
Since the initiative involves persons born in Cuba, Washington has the legal right to deport them. However for many years the relations between the two countries are not based on law. The US has a law that grants residency to any Cuban who touches US soil, even if they are criminals, terrorists or murderers.
Part of the “Mariel” exodus of 1980 were criminals taken from Cuban jails to send north, but these “excludables” represent only 10% of the 35,000 Congress wants to deport. The rest received their “education” in the streets and prisons of the USA.
If Cuba accepts their return, it will suffer the violence suffered by Central American nations today that accepted gang members deported from the US. It is a good mirror to look at and think when your neighbor’s house is on fire, beware of your own.
Cuban society is one that enjoys greater security than most of Latin America, and levels of violence and local crime are relatively minimal. Rudy, a cameraman for CNN who lived years on the island, said that Cubans offenders are children compared with those of his native New York.
Recently, US security companies began hiring thugs to protect celebrities visiting the island. Now Congress wants to send dangerous criminals of Cuban origin to live among us. What is going to become of the nation if it goes down that path?
Cuba must open itself to the world, a pope said when visiting the island, but Cubans should not forget that the national poet once wrote that, on occasion, there’s a need to shout a resounding “Close the wall!”
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(*) Visit the website of Fernando Ravsberg.
I think that this will not happen, look at the kid who brought thousands of dollar in Guanabacoa and was found to have engaged in felonies for medicare fraud! Now they belong to the US feed them!
Fernando: were not the 2,746 “excludables” from the Mariel boatlift returned to Cuba as a part of the 1984 migration agreement? They cannot be part of the 10% of the 35,000 you refer to.
This is pretty off-topic – lo siento.
I hope and pray that Cuba will sternly resist all U.S. pressures to turn over Assata Shakur. US law enforcement is just itching to grab her, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised by a kidnapping. Do you think she’ll recieve the protection of bodyguards?
Hey, if you’re going to use immigration as a political strategy by populating Miami with every Cuban that arrives, while denying Mexicans access to the northern half of their country you yourselves stole, you can’t cherry pick. Not when your’e turning back Haitians fleeing from the slaughter of a CIA-backed dictator. If your’e going to fund a few thousand assasination attempts, buy a fleet of aircraft, spend millions on intelligence, elbow half the planet into imposing arduous sanctions, and torture Arab teeenagers in land you grabbed before the Revolucion – quit whining.
Those 35,000 strapping lads are yours to keep: say hello to your Uncle Sam, fellas!
A detail on the movie: Stone wrote the screenplay, but it was directed by Brian DePalma.
Another of Fidel’s Mariel gifts to the US was Julio González, the man who firebombed the Happy Land disco in NYC, murdering 87 people.
Agree, it would be another American punishment to Cuba. Yes, NUTS
Oliver Stone should write another movie about this. Stone’s “Scarface” movie opened with actual video of some of the 120,000 Cubans arriving in Miami during the Mariel Boatlift, many of them hardened criminals that Fidel Castro famously wanted to get shed of. Stone’s infamous Miami drug-dealer, Tony Montana, was depicted as one of Castro’s most infamous gifts to Miami.
If the US is to pursue this path, then they should pursue it with ALL those who are eligible for deportation. As the world’s leading country for jailing people and with it’s shameful record of imprisoning Blacks at 6 time the rate of whites, the US understandably ought to be considering how to reduce the number of people in its jails, but shipping them off to other countries of origin is not the way to achieve it. One can hear Donald Trump, currently leading candidate for the Republican Party’s Presidential nomination, trumpeting his approval for the proposal.
To quote an historical US response: “NUTS”.