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Cuban Refugees Arrive in Florida on Homemade Boat

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A group of twelve Cuban rafters reached Key West, in the extreme south of Florida, on Monday, after escaping from Cuba’s communist dictatorship on board a precarious vessel and were detained by Border Patrol agents and local police, authorities said.

The 12 Cuban immigrants were traveling in a “precarious, overloaded and unsafe homemade boat,” the U.S. Border Patrol said on its Twitter account.

Thomas G. Martin, head of Border Protection (USBP), stressed that these kinds of “unsafe trips” by sea from Cuba remain “very dangerous” for all involved.

In January 2017, then-President Barack Obama canceled the “wet foot/dry foot” policy enacted in 1995 that facilitated the migration of Cubans to the United States as a favor to the communist regime to discourage the flight of the island’s citizens.

Because of this ruling, Cubans who touched U.S. territory within one year and one day of staying in the country were favored by the Cuban Adjustment Act and could stay, even obtaining permanent residence, while the others were deported to the island.

As a result, Cubans escaping from communism now have no possibility of settling legally in the United States in the first place unless by means of political asylum.

Last Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, published a video on his Twitter account in which Obama praised Cuba’s health and education system, criticizing the approach of the former democratic president regarding communist and socialist regimes.

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