The Tribune

By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

NINETEEN Cubans were arrested by Royal Bahamas Defence Force officers over the weekend, Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell said yesterday.

The immigrants, who were being taken to Nassau from Bimini after being discovered at Cat Cay, will bring the number of Cubans housed at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre to 50 based on figures released by the Department of Immigration.

Cubans are the second largest number of migrants currently housed at the holding facility.

Haitian migrants are the first, accounting for 56.5 per cent of the now 214 foreign nationals detained at the facility.

There are 21 Jamaicans at the centre and six immigrants from the Dominican Republic.

The remaining 16 immigrants are reported to be from France, Venezuela, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, St Lucia, Ecuador, Peru, Bangladesh, China, India, Dominica and Colombia.

The Immigration Department said that since the beginning of the year, 3,417 immigrants from 24 different countries were repatriated to their homelands.

Eighty-three per cent of the migrants repatriated were from Haiti.

“There’s a lot of work which is being done to try and police the waters and to make sure that our borders are not breached,” Mr Mitchell said.