Drug Smuggling a Risk if US Relations with Cuba Shift, Officials Say Patrick Oppmann - CNN
go to original June 14, 2017

Cubans, Americans ask Trump to continue thaw (New China TV)

For Cuban officials on the front lines of the fight against drug trafficking, the Trump administration’s threat to roll back improved relations between the United States and the communist-run island comes at a dangerous moment.

In rare interviews, two officials in charge of Cuban drug enforcement efforts told CNN they have seen an increase in smuggling just as US cooperation seems to be wavering.

The officials, both with Cuba's Interior Ministry, said that since President Barack Obama ended the "wet foot, dry foot" provision in 2016 that gave Cubans preferential immigration treatment, smugglers who once brought Cuban migrants into the United States aboard high-speed boats are now increasingly bringing drugs across the Straits of Florida.

"There's been a readjustment," said Lt. Col. Héctor González Hernández, head of Cuba's Counterdrug Directorate, "We have evidence that the criminal networks are changing from human trafficking to drug trafficking or both at the same time."

So far in 2017, Cuban officials say they have seized or recovered nearly 3 tons of marijuana and cocaine from drug traffickers, more than triple the amount of drugs they seized during the first six months of last year.

At the same time, Cuban officials said, two meetings with their counterparts in the United States scheduled to take place in 2017 to discuss drug trafficking have either been canceled or postponed as the Trump administration prepares to roll back US-Cuban relations that thawed under the Obama administration.

Read the rest at CNN

Related: US Relations Could Get a Little More Chilly with Cuba (Tribune News)

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