Cubans on security radar

The Government is seeking to curb an influx of Cubans who appear to be using Jamaica as a transit point to Central America in an attempt to illegally gain entry into the United States.

Minister of National Security Dr Horace Chang confirmed in a Gleaner interview on Wednesday that he was aware of the Cuban matter.

“There is concern that a number of them are using that facility to transit to Nicaragua and then on to the United States through the southern border,” Chang disclosed.

“We are aware of the challenge, and we’re looking at how that problem can be corrected,” he added.

The Mexican border is also a popular corridor for a human-smuggling racket involving the illegal migration of hundreds of Jamaicans annually.

It is not clear whether Washington has put pressure on Kingston to put a lid on the Cubans’ access point in a similar way that Mexico has clamped down on Jamaicans seeking entry at its borders.

The Spanish-speaking Caribbean island has been hit by galloping inflation and one of the worst shortages of food and medicine in decades, with more than 32,000 Cubans arriving at the US-Mexico border in March, according to international media reports.

Immigration officers employed at the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA), who spoke to The Gleaner on condition of anonymity on Monday, said hundreds of Cubans have been travelling to the island for the past three years to secure passage to Central and North America.

PICA Chief Executive Officer Andrew Wynter was terse in his response to Gleaner queries, saying only: “The matter has been referred to the Ministry of National Security.”

A follow-up phone call and messages have not been answered.

An immigration officer told The Gleaner that the matter went unchecked because of a policy shift at PICA in which customer service representatives are being used to interface with foreigners instead of immigration officers.

The officer said, too, that some have presented fraudulent documents but have nonetheless been allowed passage.

“The guys on the front can’t pick up the pattern because they are not trained as immigration officers. When them collect the documents, collect the passports, collect the fees, and all of that, when the documents come to us at the back to do the processing, that’s when we detect all of this,” the officer said.

The security minister has, however, denied that claim, noting that the documents presented by Cubans are legitimate.

Cuban ambassador to Jamaica, Fermín Quiñones, also denied the allegations of fraud, noting that Cubans travel to Jamaica “in accordance with the law”.

“They are not doing anything that is forbidden for anybody,” he said in a Gleaner interview.

He declined to speak on the matter of his countrymen using Jamaica as a transit point to get to the US, noting that he did not have enough information.

Granville Valentine, general secretary of the National Workers’ Union, which represents immigration officers, said the increase in Cuban arrivals and the subsequent processing is a result of the removal of officers from the front line.

“This must change immediately. What they have done is remove trained immigration officers from the front line and the vetting process, put them in a back room, and use customer service representatives who are not licensed and not so trained to vet these foreigners who are coming here and saying that they want an extension of time, they want to stay, and so on,” said Valentine.

“So an untrained eye, an untrained mind is vetting these foreign nationals. It is one of the breaches which we have raised and asked the minister and the permanent secretary to make sure, with immediacy, it must return to norm and the officers be given back their functions,” the trade unionist added.

Valentine said officers have sometimes signed off on documents despite not vetting foreigners, calling it a “serious” breach of national security.

Chang said that the issues between the officers and management are currently being worked through in discussions.