By Nelson Acosta
HAVANA (Reuters) – A Trump administration proposal to deport mass numbers of immigrants residing in the U.S. illegally, presumably including some Cubans, is both unrealistic and unfair, Cuba’s Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio told reporters on Wednesday.
De Cossio, who made the comments following routine migration talks in Havana with counterparts from the Biden administration, said any such deportation proposal would need to be vetted within the bounds of existing agreements on migration between the U.S. and Cuba.
“In that context, it’s not realistic to think that there could be mass deportations from the U.S. to Cuba,” de Cossio said.
Trump recaptured the White House vowing a vast immigration crackdown, including a promise to deport record numbers of immigrants, an operation Trump’s running mate JD Vance estimated could remove 1 million people per year.
Trump’s incoming border czar Tom Homan has said deportations would focus on criminals and people with final deportation orders but has not committed to exemptions for any specific groups or nationalities.
The Trump deportation proposal was not discussed with Biden officials during Wednesday’s bilateral migration talks, de Cossio said.
Under existing accords, Cuba has accepted small numbers of deportations from the United States, by air and by sea, during the Biden administration.
It was not clear whether Trump would abide by existing accords with Cuba or seek to renegotiate them, as he has in other circumstances.
Cuba has for decades blamed the U.S. Cold War-era trade embargo for decimating its economy and encouraging the mass migration of Cubans to the United States.
But a much larger scale deportation to send those Cubans back home would be unjust, de Cossio said.
“That approach … seems quite drastic and I would say quite unfair,” de Cossio said. “Trying to deport tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Cubans to Cuba … would be uprooting people who have already made their lives in the United States.”
Trump struggled to ramp up deportations during his 2017-2021 presidency.
When counting both immigration removals and faster “returns” to Mexico by U.S. border officials, Biden deported more immigrants in fiscal year 2023 than any Trump year, according to government data.
Immigrant advocates warn that a broader Trump deportation effort would be costly, divisive and inhumane, leading to family separations and devastating communities.
(Reporting by Nelson Acosta; Editing by Dave Sherwood and Stephen Coates)
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