The Biden administration has allowed a former member of the Cuban Communist Party’s Central Committee to immigrate to the U.S. Manuel Mendez Castellanos arrived at Miami International Airport on Thursday as an immigrant, where the U.S. granted him entry, despite his role as a member of the most brutally oppressive dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere.
Via Diario de Cuba (my translation):
The former Central Committee member of the Communist Party of Cuba, Manuel Méndez Castellanos, joins the list of former leaders and officials of the Island’s regime who have arrived in the United States in search of a better life. His arrival in Miami this Thursday was confirmed by the US media outlet Martí Noticias at the city’s International Airport.
Menéndez Castellanos arrived in the US through a family reunification process. He was admitted to the country after long hours of waiting at the airport. He was greeted by a group of people, presumably relatives. Both he and his companions refused to answer questions from Martí Noticias.
“No, I’m going home,” were the only words from the former communist leader, who even attempted to grab the camera from the person filming him, according to the report by the US media.
In a video posted on Facebook by Miami-based Cuban journalist Mario Pentón, Menéndez Castellanos is seen arriving in a wheelchair, wearing a pink shirt, a black cap, and a mask. One of the people waiting for him mentioned it was difficult to recognize him “with the mask”.
Manuel Menéndez Castellanos was the first secretary of the Communist Party in Cienfuegos from 1993 to 2003. An article in the state-run newspaper Granma on September 6, 2001, also described him as a member of the Central Committee of Cuba’s only legal party.
The former leader also represented the Cuban regime in international events such as the Congress of the Communist Party of Venezuela and the 10th Anniversary of the Unification of Yemen. A former resident of Cienfuegos described him as “a despotic leader” in statements to Martí Noticias.
“In Cienfuegos, he was a despotic leader, like all of them. He never disengaged from power,” said Joaquín Zardón, who lived in the Reina neighborhood of that Cuban province when Menéndez Castellanos was the first secretary of the PCC. “They called him Manolito, with that false familiarity that Communist Party bosses try to use to appear close to the people. He stole a lot, like all leaders, and in the end, he still had good connections at the top,” he added.
A Cuban woman waiting for her family at Miami International Airport told the US media that she felt “ashamed” to see a former communist leader arriving in Miami without Immigration doing anything.
It is inconceivable the U.S. would allow an individual who for decades participated in brutal mass oppression to come to the U.S. to live out the rest of his life in impunity and luxury, but that’s the immigration policy we have today under Biden and will continue under a Harris administration.
It’s supposed to be offensive. “Those people” won’t vote Dem anyway, so screw them. The Cubanoids, of course, will vote Dem even if the same thing is done with Mariela Castro.
Even worse, he deports good Cubans who want to escape the same government the sociopath in the pink shirt helped support.
He is old and probably will qualify for some of the social services offered to immigrants at our expense…
Cubans risk their lifes and come over in rafts or makeshift boats and if they are stopped before reaching land they are deported but here we have a member of the Communist Party and he is allowed into the US not as a defector but just as an immigrant….