The Cuban broadcast news service Telecubanacán is reporting that on May 24 a boat carrying 842 Haitians–men, women, children, and some newborns–had landed, accidentally, near the Cuban town of Caibarién. The migrants had hoped to reach the United States.
Telecubanacán says the migrants will be held temporarily at a camp near the northern town of Corralillo until they can be removed back to Haiti.
Local residents expressed surprise at the migrants’ unexpected arrival. One said, “With so many countries and they came to get here. Here they are going to discover what true poverty is.”
This is not the first time wrong-way Haitians have landed in Cuba. In February, a boat carrying 292 Haitian migrants landed in the northern province of Ciego de Ávila. Last October, a ship carrying 50 ran aground in the same area, and official figures show that from 2001 to 2021 a total of 76 boats with more than 4,000 Haitian migrants disembarked in the eastern province of Guantánamo.
Cuba’s policy is to process the migrants and return them to Haiti, where–as Breitbart notes–“they may be free to attempt to escape again.”
For more, see Breitbart.