Two high-ranking Biden administration officials will travel to Havana this week to discuss migration issues, just days after survivors of a speedboat with Cuban migrants heading to the United States said the Cuban Coast Guard rammed their vessel, killing seven passengers including a 2-year-old girl.
The trip of State Department Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs Rena Bitter and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ur Mendoza Jaddou to Havana is the highest-level visit of U.S officials since the Obama administration, at least publicly.
The State Department said both officials would discuss with their Cuban counterparts the full resumption of immigrant visa processing in early 2023 and the recent resumption of Cuban Family Reunification Parole processing at the U.S. Embassy in Havana.
The statement doesn’t say the exact day Bitter will be in Havana. It says she will be traveling Nov. 6-10, with stops in Georgetown, Guyana; Miami; and Havana.
As operations in Georgetown wind down, the State Department said Bitter will express “appreciation” to Guyana officials “for their cooperation on consular services, including facilitating the processing of U.S. immigrant visas for Cuban nationals” since 2018. Bitter will also review U.S. passport facility operations and meet staff in Miami.
Since 2017, when the Trump administration evacuated the Havana Embassy of staff due to the unexplained health symptoms suffered by some U.S. officials posted there, Cubans seeking to reunite with their families in the United States had to travel first to Colombia and later to Guyana to get visas. The Biden administration restarted some visa processing in Havana early this year and said immigration visa services would resume fully next year.
The administration also resumed the Cuban Family Reunification Parole this summer in the hopes of curbing the largest exodus of Cubans coming to the United States in several decades, almost 225,000, in the fiscal year 2022.
But Cubans continue attempting the perilous trip, trekking through Central America to the border with Mexico or taking to the sea, many in handmade rafts. On Friday, the U.S. Coast Guard repatriated 68 Cubans trying to reach Florida shores to the island.
The two governments acknowledged that their coast guards were cooperating to stop the dangerous sea voyages. But the incident in Bahía Honda, where seven people died, likely generated tension and the Department of State said it was gathering information about what happened.
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