President Barack Obama is ending the decades-old wet foot, dry foot policy for Cuban immigrants, the White House announced on Thursday, a major shift in the U.S. approach to the island nation and one that could also put President-elect Donald Trump in a bind.
The Cuban government, Obama said, has agreed to take back Cubans who are deported from the United States. The move, first reported by the Associated Press just eight days before he leaves office, caught the foreign policy establishment off-guard. It’s perhaps the most high-profile step toward normalizing relations with the communist island since Obama began his détente with the Castro regime in December 2014.
And it kicks a major decision to Trump.
Trump could conceivably reverse Obama’s executive action after he moves into the White House next week. That would likely be the preference of the Cuba hard-liners on his foreign policy team, including his chosen deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland and transition official Mauricio Claver-Cuoron, a top pro-embargo activist. However, closing the borders was Trump’s central campaign promise.
Two years ago, Obama announced plans to normalize relations with Cuba, after five decades of a strict embargo. Since then, both countries have opened embassies in their respective capitals, and the U.S. has gradually lifted trade restrictions, and commercial airlines such as Jet Blue, Southwest and Alaska Airlines are now shuttling passengers directly from New York and from Fort Lauderdale to Havana.
Some of Obama’s Cuban ambitions have been stymied by Congress, where questions about Cuba blur party lines. Lawmakers have refused to confirm an ambassador or lift the main trade restrictions. So ending special privileges for Cuban migrants appears to be Obama’s last big, unilateral move.
Lawmakers and advocacy groups that back more engagement with Cuba didn’t wait for an official White House announcement to praise the move.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) was sharply critical, complaining that the Obama administration did not consult Congress.
Sen. Marco Rubio said in a statement: "The Cuban Adjustment Act has provided countless Cubans the opportunity to escape the Castro tyranny. However, in recent years it has also led to growing abuses. While some changes were needed, we must work to ensure that Cubans who arrive here to escape political persecution are not summarily returned to the regime, and they are given a fair opportunity to apply for and receive political asylum."
More than 20 years ago, the U.S. offered an unusual and dangerous escape route for Cubans: if the Coast Guard intercepted them at sea, they’d be sent back home. However, if they set foot on a Florida beach (or, increasingly, on the Southern border after a desert trek), they’d be automatically eligible to stay in the U.S. and pursue citizenship.
While refugee status won’t be granted automatically, the U.S. is by no means ruling out taking in Cubans, said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. “Cuban migrants, like everybody elese, will still be able to apply for asylum consistent with our laws,” Johnson said on the press call.
Cuban immigration to the U.S. has spiked since Obama announced the change in posture toward Cuba, with 40,000 immigrants arriving in 2015 and more than 50,000 arriving in 2016, Obama’s national security spokesman Ben Rhodes told reporters on Thursday. That increase – driven in part by fears that the U.S. would end Cuban migrants’ special privileges – “increased the sense of urgency” to do precisely that, Rhodes said.
A bill proposing changing the immigration rules for Cubans was introduced last year by a bipartisan pair from Texas: Rep. Blake Farenthold (R) and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D), but did not ultimately make its way to Obama’s desk.
It was unclear whether there’d be any legal roadblocks to prevent Trump from reversing Obama’s action, which took the form of a Department of Homeland Security policy. Asked about such a possibility, Johnson tried to stress that it was Obama who had been the one to “repeal" something: the exceptions granted to Cubans in the 1990s.
“This is not the enactment of a policy that can be repealed by a subsequent administration,” Johnson said.