Friday, July 16, 2021
Wednesday, July 14, 2021
People Facing Real Terror Told To Stay Home Or Will Be Deported
DHS Secretary: People Fleeing Persecution in Cuba or Haiti Won't Be Allowed Into US
July 14, 2021 at 6:27am
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Maryorkas warned Cubans and Haitians on Tuesday that the Biden administration will throw out anyone who attempts to come to the United States by sea.
The statement comes from a Biden administration that claimed it “stand[s] with the Cuban people as they bravely assert their fundamental and universal rights, and as they all call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering.”
“The time is never right to attempt migration by sea. To those who risk their lives doing so, this risk is not worth taking,” Mayorkas said at a news conference at the U.S. Coast Guard’s headquarters in Washington.
He highlighted that the seas are risky, especially during hurricane seasons, Fox News reported.
Mayorkas is himself a citizen who first came to the U.S. from Cuba as a refugee.
“Allow me to be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States,” he said.
Haiti suffers from political chaos following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse last week.
Riddled with longstanding instability, human rights abuses and police and gang violence, according to Human Rights Watch, the country reached out to the U.S. to help restore order with American troops, a plea the Biden administration rebuffed.
Do you think the Cuban and Haitian refugees should be let into the U.S.?
Cuba, on the other hand, is facing an unprecedented uprising against the communist regime as COVID-19’s aftermath proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Suffering from food and medical shortages, soaring prices and other economic crises, civilians took to the streets Sunday demanding an end to more than 60 years of communist repression. During the demonstrations, some of them waved the American flag as a symbol of freedom.
The communist government has started cracking down on its citizens who demonstrated Sunday, restricting popular internet services and even going so far as to arrest a YouTuber on camera in the middle of an interview, as reported by NPR.
Mayorkas said at the Tuesday news conference that the Coast Guard is keeping an eye out for undocumented migration across the Florida Straits during this tumultuous period for both Haiti and Cuba. He said the concerned agencies have not yet observed a “surge” in undocumented crossings.
Anyone who makes an undocumented crossing will be returned “by vessels of interdiction. If individuals establish a well-founded fear of persecution or torture, they are referred to third countries for settlement,” Mayorkas said, according to Fox News.
“They will not enter the United States,” he said.
The secretary said authorities have intercepted 470 Cubans and 313 Haitians at sea in the fiscal year 2021, according to Politico. In the previous fiscal year, 49 Cubans and 430 Haitians were intercepted.
Mayorkas in May said Haitian nationals already in the U.S. would receive a temporary protected status designation, permitting them to have legal status for 18 months, the outlet reported.
He underlined Tuesday that the status designation is “not an immigration program,” Politico reported.
Katharina Obser, acting director of the Migrant Rights & Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission, slammed the Biden administration for Mayorkas’ statements, according to The Washington Post.
She said the organization was “gravely disappointed” by his “repeated insistence on rejecting desperate families, children, and single adults from our borders, whether by foot or by sea.”
Many Cuban-Americans in South Florida were angered by Mayorkas’ statement.
Others pointed out the possible political motivation behind the decision.
“Cubans are being slaughtered by communists and the Biden administration won’t let them come to the U.S. because they know that the majority of Cubans vote for Republicans,” Daily Wire reporter Ryan Saavedra wrote in a Wednesday post on Twitter.
According to a 2020 Pew Research Center survey, most Cuban-Americans identify as Republican.
Monday, July 12, 2021
American Flags In Havana
Biden Admin Calls for 'Calm' as Cubans Rise Up Against Oppressive Communist Regime
July 12, 2021 at 10:01amThousands of protestors across Cuba marched in an unprecedented demonstration of discontent Sunday against the ruling Communist government.
Cuba has never seen such an uprising against the ruling Communist Party of Cuba in over 30 years, The New York Times reported.
The people were lashing out against the ruling Communists over food shortages, rising prices and COVID-19 vaccine shortages, according to The Independent.
“The people are dying of hunger!” one woman chanted in an Artemisa province demonstration, according to footage uploaded on Facebook. “Our children are dying of hunger!”
The voice of the people chanting “Libertad!,” which translates to “Liberty!,” and shouts of “We are not afraid!” echoed on the streets of Cuba’s capital city Havana. Some of the protestors were waving the American flag as they shouted for freedom.
In what seemed to be a rebuke of Fidel Castro’s “Patria O Muerte (Homeland or Death)” slogan, some of the protestors chanted “¡Patria y Vida! (Homeland and Life!)”
Videos from Bejucal, south of Havana, show citizens shouting for freedom as townspeople bring out a statue of “Our Lady of Charity (Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre)” from a local place of worship. Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre is a name given to Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is considered the country’s Patroness.
The display of the statue during the protests was a powerful symbol in a country known for restricting religious practice after the Communist seizure of power in 1959.
The COVID-19 pandemic which stopped vital tourism revenue from flowing into the country was the straw that broke the camel’s back after years of Communist repression, The Times reported.
The Communist government of the country on Sunday blamed the United States for the island country’s economic situation.
“Cubans know perfectly well that the government of the United States is principally responsible for Cuba’s current situation,” Cuba’s foreign ministry said in a Twitter post. “Cuba and its streets belong to the revolutionaries.”
Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel claimed, without providing evidence, “a group of counterrevolutionary people, mercenaries” funded by the U.S. government “set up this type of demonstration, at a time when we have to focus on how we care for those who are suffering.”
“We are ready for everything. We will be in the streets fighting. We are calling on communists and revolutionaries to go to the street and confront the protests today and everyday,” Díaz-Canel said.
Some of the demonstrators hurled stones at police officers, The Associated Press reported.
AP journalists saw police and individuals donning civilian clothes take over 20 people away before the march dispersed.
“The people came out to express themselves freely, and they are repressing and beating them,” Rev. Jorge Luis Gil, a Roman Catholic priest, told the AP.
When several people took out their smartphones to broadcast the march and the police response, the Communist regime responded by shutting down internet connectivity.
Roughly 300 pro-Communist marchers then came, bearing huge Cuban flags. They were shouting pro-Fidel Castro and pro-Communist revolution slogans. Some of those demonstrators attacked an AP videojournalist, destroying his camera. Police attacked another AP photojournalist, the outlet reported.
The Biden administration’s Acting Assistant Secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs Julie Chung was slammed by critics on social media for tying the protests to COVID-19.
“Peaceful protests are growing in #Cuba as the Cuban people exercise their right to peaceful assembly to express concern about rising COVID case/deaths & medicine shortage. We commend the numerous efforts of the Cuban people mobilizing donations to help neighbors,” Chung wrote in a Sunday post on Twitter.
According to Chung’s Twitter bio, posts expressing her viewpoint must be signed with her initials “JC.” However, this post did not have her initials, leaving netizens to wonder if she was expressing her personal opinion or that of the Biden administration.
Fox News‘ request for clarification was not immediately answered by the Department of State.
“People in #Cuba are protesting 62 years of socialism, lies, tyranny & misery not ‘expressing concern about rising COVID cases/deaths’,” Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio wrote in a Twitter post calling Chung’s tweet “ridiculous.”
“Why is it so hard for @potus & the people in his administration to say that?” Rubio asked.
Chung then put out another Twitter post stating “We are deeply concerned by ‘calls to combat’ in #Cuba. We stand by the Cuban people’s right for peaceful assembly. We call for calm and condemn any violence,” without specifying who is making the “calls to combat.”
Chung was then asked by a Twitter user, “Who’s being violent in Cuba, Julie? Where are the ‘calls for combat’ coming from? Why can’t you condemn the communist regime? You embody everything wrong with the State Department.”
It took a day since the protests began for U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, to gather the courage to finally issue a statement on the protests.
“We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime,” a White House news release stated.
“The Cuban people are bravely asserting fundamental and universal rights. Those rights, including the right of peaceful protest and the right to freely determine their own future, must be respected. The United States calls on the Cuban regime to hear their people and serve their needs at this vital moment rather than enriching themselves.”