• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 04 / 25 / 2011

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Sunday, April 24, 2011. MIAMI, USA (CMC) – United States immigration officials say they have changed the way thousands of Cubans facing deportation comply with immigration rules.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency now requires Miami residents to travel across county lines to a Miramar office for check-in.

ICE said that Caribbean and other foreign nationals with deportation orders but not in detention must now report to Miramar.

Before, they had to report their whereabouts at an immigration building in downtown Miami.

ICE officials said that the Krome Detention Centre serves detainees, while Miramar serves non-detained deportees.

Though more than 30,000 Cuban exiles have been ordered deported from the United States, fewer than 3,000 actually have been removed since the 1980s, officials said.

The Cubans who have been deported are mostly Mariel refugees who arrived during the 1980 boatlift.

Under an agreement between the Cuban government and the Reagan administration in 1984, some 2,740 Mariel Cubans can be removed. Less than 900 Mariel Cubans remain to be deported.

All other Cuban exiles with deportation orders have not been removed because the Cuban government, in general, refuses to take them back, and the United States has in place an informal policy of not deporting Cubans.

Cubans are ordered deported largely for the same reasons as other foreign nationals in the United States, when they are convicted of a crime.

ICE recently released a report revealing that more than 2,000 criminals have been deported to the Caribbean in the past six months.

The figures show that from the start of the 2011 fiscal year in October last year to the end of March this year, 88,497 criminal “aliens” or migrants were deported to their country of birth in the Latin America and the Caribbean region.

A “criminal alien” is defined under US immigration laws as a migrant who is convicted of a crime.

The number deported to Latin America alone stood at 86,469 while 2,028 were sent back to the Caribbean.

For the Caribbean, 1,066 criminals were sent to the Dominican Republic followed by 528 to Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago with 125. Belize received 74, followed by The Bahamas with 65, and Guyana 64.

So far this fiscal year, ICE said 50 migrants have been sent back to Aruba and 31 to earthquake ravaged Haiti. Other Caribbean nations received far less criminal deportees.

Cuba received 20 in the past six months, Barbados 11, Dominica 10, St. Lucia seven and Antigua five. Four persons were sent back to Bermuda, while St. Kitts received three. Two each were sent to Suriname, the British Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands.

The figures show that Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos, received one criminal deportee each.

The biggest receiver of criminal migrants was Mexico with 70,874 deported as of March 28.

Source: //www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/New-rules-for-US-deportations