Feds deported 119 Cubans on Friday

MIAMI — Immigration officials deported 119 Cubans back to Havana on Friday, in a flight that departed from Miami International Airport.

The Cuba repatriation flight is at least the third in the past six months. The Trump administration’s efforts to detain and send undocumented Cubans back to the island got a boost in September, when the agency announced it successfully completed what it called one of the “largest” Cuba repatriation missions in recent history.

The size and nature of that “historic” flight — which deported 120 Cubans out of Louisiana — has now become the norm, some local immigration experts say, with recent repatriation flights regularly taking more than 100 Cubans back to Havana.

“That number is no longer a shocking number,” said Wilfredo Allen, a longtime Miami immigration attorney. “Years ago, people would gasp at this news. But now, there is no surprise that 120 Cubans are deported. It’s normal.”

Over the years, special privileges for Cubans have withered away. The White House has tightened restrictions on travel to Cuba, allowed lawsuits in U.S. courts against anyone that profits from Cuban properties seized by the Castro government and slapped sanctions on delivery of oil from Venezuela to the island.

In 2019, more than twice as many Cubans were deported than in 2018, according to recent data. In December, federal officials released the latest deportation statistics, which showed that 1,179 Cubans were detained nationwide during the 2019 fiscal year, compared to 463 in 2018. In 2017 there were 160 arrests.

The ICE data does not break down the deportation by state or region so it’s unclear how many Cubans were detained and deported from South Florida during its most recent flight, as well as the previous others.