A marine vessel carrying 842 Haitian migrants en route to the United States accidentally landed in Villa Clara, Cuba, on Tuesday, baffling locals in a country enduring its own mass exodus, the independent outlet Cubanet reported Wednesday.
Cubanet noted that Castro regime-controlled media outlets confirmed the news and that reports indicated many of the hundreds of people on board were children, “including newborns.” The Communist Party is expected to deport the Haitian nationals back to their country, where they may be free to attempt to escape again.
Haiti, the poorest nation in the Americas, has faced a worsening social crisis since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise last summer as he slept in his home. Nearly a year later, warring criminal gangs and crisis-level poverty, with little to no reaction from the Haitian government, have prompted swelling numbers of fleeing citizens, many of them attempting to reach the United States.
Haiti still does not have a true president since Moise’s assassination. Prime Minister Ariel Henry, accused of playing a role in Moise’s assassination, has assumed presidential responsibilities since Moise’s killing. A third man, former Supreme Court justice Joseph Mécène Jean-Louis, who had declared himself the legitimate president of Haiti and Moise an impostor while he was alive, disappeared from the public eye after declaring himself president in February.
According to Cubanet, the Cuban regime broadcaster Telecubanacán confirmed the arrival of the Haitian migrants in a Facebook post Tuesday.
The post claimed that “over 800 people from Haiti” who intended to reach America had instead landed in Villa Clara, Cuba.
“In compliance with international norms, Cuban authorities immediately proceeded to provide them with medical care and humanitarian assistance,” the post claimed — a privilege the Cuban communist regime infamously denies to its own citizens. The state outlet claimed that it was in contact with the government of Haiti to “ensure the safe and voluntary return of these people to their country.”
Cubanet noted that an unspecified number of children, including “newborns,” were on the vessel, and that the incident was the latest in series of wayward Haitians arriving on the island.
“In February of this year, a precarious vessel with 292 Haitians [on it], including 56 minors, that was attempting to reach the United States landed in Ciego de Ávila province [Cuba],” Cubanet relayed. A similar incident also occurred in October, on that occasion involving a vessel with 50 Haitian migrants on it.
Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, published photos of Cuban government workers tending to the migrants, including one state employee cradling a baby. The Castro regime has framed the incident as an example of its alleged humanitarian posture, a rebuke to the extensive evidence of rampant human rights abuses against Cubans, including the widespread imprisonment of child political prisoners.
Cuban propaganda outlets also published video footage of the small and densely packed vessel at sea.
A teen migrant on the boat that landed in Cuba on Tuesday, identified as 19-year-old Joyce Paul, told the Associated Press their ship left Haiti on Saturday and that 15 people had committed suicide between their departure and their arrival in Cuba.
“We were on Tortuga Island for two months waiting for the trip until last Saturday, when at five in the morning they took us to the boat,” the AP quoted Paul as saying. “15 people threw themselves into the sea because they couldn’t stand hunger. There was a herring for (each) 15 people and they gave us water.”
Paul told the outlet that she and her relatives had paid $4,000 each for getting on the boat and that the captain had abandoned the ship on Tuesday prior to their landing.
Multiple reports this month indicate that violent crime in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, fueled by organized gangs has rapidly increased this year. Mass abductions of citizens in the hope of procuring ransoms have become a particularly horrifying problem for Haitian nationals, as well as the lack of government action to keep gangs from controlling major roads and highways, thus establishing roadblocks to assault, rob, and otherwise victimize locals. The violence has also expanded to the abduction of foreign nationals and attacks on Christian missionaries.
The result has been a surge of Haitians arriving at the U.S. southern border. Last week, a source within U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) told Breitbart News that the El Paso Sector has become the most prolific in the country in migrant detentions, processing nearly 5,000 people in one day alone. More than half, the source said, were Haitian.
Neighboring Cuba has prompted an equal, if not larger, flow of refugees into the United States. As President Barack Obama banned Cubans from legally staying in the country after arriving by sea with the repeal of the “wet foot/dry foot” policy in 2017, one of the most popular routes to America now is flying into communist Nicaragua, which does not require a visa for Cubans, and joining migrant caravans to reach the southern border. U.S. Coast Guard continues to deport Cubans who attempt a marine voyage to the country, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has done little to stop Cubans on the southern border
President Joe Biden announced policy reforms last week that would greatly enrich the Castro regime, including removing a limit on remittances sent back to the regime and the restoration of “people-to-people” group travel, a form of legalized tourism to the island.