Cuban migrants in Mexico demand freedom after 3 months in a lockup

Posted on Friday, 06.14.13

Cuban migrants in Mexico demand freedom after 3 months in a lockup
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Seven Cubans detained for nearly three months in a kind of immigration
limbo in southern Mexico say their guards are mistreating them for
demanding that they be allowed to continue their trip to the border with
the United States.

Mexican authorities, meanwhile, on Thursday were processing another 19
Cuban would-be migrants who turned up on the Caribbean coast of the
Yucatan Peninsula after the motor on their makeshift boat broke down.

The 16 men and three women, being held in a migration lockup in the city
of Chetumal, told local journalists that they had left 20 days earlier
from Granma province in southern Cuba. Tides and winds carried them
westward.

Mexican authorities intercepted the group of seven Cubans on March 23
near the southern border with Guatemala and put them in an immigration
lockup in the city of Tapachula. A local human rights group held a news
conference Thursday to complain about their continued detention.

"We're not being told anything" about their cases, Roque Emilio Martinez
Angulo, 46, one of the seven and former member in Cuba of the
Miami-based Democracy Movement, said by phone from Tapachula.

The seven are relatives of the 116 Cuban political prisoners who were
freed by Cuban ruler Raúl Castro in 2010 and 2011 and were flown
directly into exile in Spain, along with more than 500 family members.

Using their temporary Spanish residency documents, the five men and two
women flew to Costa Rica and Nicaragua and then headed north by land
toward the Mexican border with the United States, said Martinez's cousin
in Miami, Isabel Martinez.

Mexican authorities in Tapachula declared their Spanish documents were
not valid for travel, Martinez Angulo said, so the seven renounced their
Spanish residency and asked to be treated like other undocumented Cuban
migrants in Mexico — being freed on a 30-day permit that gives them time
to get up to the border.

Cubans who cross into the United States get to stay under the so-called
"wet-foot, dry foot" policy. The great majority of those intercepted at
sea are repatriated to the Caribbean island.

Martinez Angulo said guards at the migration lockup in Tapachula have
been mistreating the Cubans and that four days ago they pummeled some of
the men for demanding their release and protesting the lockup's conditions.

"They are in a difficult situation," said Ramon Saul Sanchez, Miami head
of the Democracy Movement. He added that he met with Mexico's consul in
Miami and wrote to Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto to complain about
the case.

Read more here:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/14/3449901/cuban-migrants-in-mexico-demand.html#storylink=cpy