I appreciate the work your team does at "Between the Lines". It is well researched, and it contains valuable information lacking from mainstream media.
But I do have one quibble. In the conclusion you said, "The weaponization of refugees and vulnerable sections of society is nothing new. Cuba sent vast numbers of criminals amongst the refugees it sent to the United States in the 1980s." I agree that weaponization of refugees is nothing new. And I agree that weaponization imposes problems, especially around resources, in the destination countries. But I disagree that Cuba sent "vast numbers" of criminals. In fact, your source said:
Castro complicated problems for the US by loading criminals from the country’s prisons and people from mental health hospitals onto the boats. They accounted for about 2% of the Mariels, but enough to taint the image of them all... It [was] a small percentage, but it was enough to challenge this notion that refugees are supposed to be processed before coming into America—that people who are excludable, such as people with a criminal record, would not be able to get in.
2% of 125,000 is 2500, which is a lot of people. But 2,500 is an estimate that could be wildly inaccurate. As the White Lies podcast (https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510343/white-lies) determined in their investigation, the Cuban criminals may have been people arrested for incredibly small offenses in Cuba, like vagrancy. Others were misclassified due to translation errors. Some were improperly detained. And others were later detained by INS due to violations of American law.
In other words, the misinformation about Cuban criminals being mixed in with refugees continues to be overblown even with the benefit of hindsight over three decades later. Similar scare-tactics are being used to create discontent in the United States today. And I feel that these tactics further increase racism in the U.S. Therefore, I thought it was important to correct the error about the number of criminals in the Mariels.
I appreciate the work your team does at "Between the Lines". It is well researched, and it contains valuable information lacking from mainstream media.
But I do have one quibble. In the conclusion you said, "The weaponization of refugees and vulnerable sections of society is nothing new. Cuba sent vast numbers of criminals amongst the refugees it sent to the United States in the 1980s." I agree that weaponization of refugees is nothing new. And I agree that weaponization imposes problems, especially around resources, in the destination countries. But I disagree that Cuba sent "vast numbers" of criminals. In fact, your source said:
Castro complicated problems for the US by loading criminals from the country’s prisons and people from mental health hospitals onto the boats. They accounted for about 2% of the Mariels, but enough to taint the image of them all... It [was] a small percentage, but it was enough to challenge this notion that refugees are supposed to be processed before coming into America—that people who are excludable, such as people with a criminal record, would not be able to get in.
2% of 125,000 is 2500, which is a lot of people. But 2,500 is an estimate that could be wildly inaccurate. As the White Lies podcast (https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510343/white-lies) determined in their investigation, the Cuban criminals may have been people arrested for incredibly small offenses in Cuba, like vagrancy. Others were misclassified due to translation errors. Some were improperly detained. And others were later detained by INS due to violations of American law.
In other words, the misinformation about Cuban criminals being mixed in with refugees continues to be overblown even with the benefit of hindsight over three decades later. Similar scare-tactics are being used to create discontent in the United States today. And I feel that these tactics further increase racism in the U.S. Therefore, I thought it was important to correct the error about the number of criminals in the Mariels.