Remember the Past

Though we are on track this year to welcome 3 million illegal immigrants from Central and South America (and indeed from all over the world), there is one nation whose desperately fleeing citizens are not welcome: Cuba.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated this forcefully at a news conference on July 13as photographs and videos of demonstrators on the streets of Cuba, some waving American flags, began showing up in US media outlets.

“Allow me to be clear,” said Mayorkas: “If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States … . If individuals make, establish a well-founded fear of persecution or torture, they are referred to third countries for resettlement … . They will not enter the United States.”

Shortly after the Cuban Revolution, when Mayorkas was still an infant, his family fled Cuba for the United States. Given that family history, one might think that Mayorkas must have felt a twinge of conscience in making that statement, but the true party member knows that all human feelings must be extinguished in service of the party.

Mayorkas, like most of Biden’s team, was a high-ranking administration official during both of Barack Obama’s terms.