A yearlong Sun Sentinel investigation found money stolen in the United States streaming back to Cuba, and a revolving door that allows thieves to come here, make a quick buck and return.
Cuba has become a bedroom community for criminals who exploit America’s good will.
“There’s a whole new sub-class of part-time residents that flow back and forth,’’ said Rene Suarez, a Fort Myers attorney who represents Cubans charged in criminal schemes. “They tell me stories and live very comfortably in Cuba with the illegitimate money that they’re able to obtain here in the United States.”
The Sun Sentinel traveled to Cuba, examined hundreds of court documents, and obtained federal data never before made public to provide the first comprehensive look at a criminal network facilitated by U.S. law.
Idag skriver New York Times om samma fråga.
In 1984, the United States and Cuban governments agreed to a list of 2,746 Cubans who could be deported to the island; almost all were Cubans who had arrived on the 1980 Mariel boatlift — an opportunity the Cuban government seized to send several thousand criminals and patients from mental institutions to Florida. They arrived as part of an exodus of 125,000 Cuban refugees who reached Key West on private boats.
Of those on that 1984 list, nearly 2,000 have been deported to Cuba. In the past three decades, the Cuban government has accepted the return of only five people not included in that Group.(—)
Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the senior Democrat on the House immigration subcommittee, said deportation should be a priority in migration talks because it has long been a problem for the United States.
“Most of the serious criminals we would like to deport, and can’t, are from Cuba,” Ms. Lofgren said. “We have situations where people have killed people.”