Panama has reached a deal to transfer to Mexico about 3,800 US-bound Cubans stranded on its territory, an official said on Sunday, but added that the flights would not be extended to future Cuban migrants.
“Panama will transfer some 3,800 Cubans to Mexico after an agreement with that country,” the Panamanian official told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity because details were not to be released until yesterday.
The official said daily flights were to begin yesterday from Panama City’s international airport, going to Juarez, Mexico.
Each planeload would carry 154 Cubans who would pay the cost of the trip themselves.
They have been blocked in Panama since March.
Costa Rica and Nicaragua have since late last year closed their borders to Cubans trying to head north overland.
Between January and March, Costa Rica oversaw flights for thousands of Cubans to El Salvador and Mexico to clear a backlog of the migrants who had become stuck by Nicaragua’s border closure.
Panama in March did likewise, organizing flights to Juarez for 1,300 Cubans.
Officials back then insisted the operation would not be repeated.
However, since then, thousands more have arrived, aiming to get to the US, where a law dating back to the Cold War gives them privileged entry and a fast track to residency. Many Cubans risk a perilous trip through South and Central America because the US seeks to throw back to Cuba any found crossing by sea to Florida.
Panamanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Isabel De Saint Malo has called Costa Rica and Nicaragua’s position “contradictory.”
However, as a result, she said, her country now believes it has also become necessary for it to close off access to Cubans “to discourage the flow of migrants.”
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