More than 680 Cubans have been deported back to Cuba since the United States ended its decades-old policy giving them preferred immigrant status in January, state media reported Saturday. According to official Cuban reports, 683 people have been sent back to the Caribbean island from the United States, or from Mexico, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, where they were crossing in a bid to reach the US border. On January 12, then-president Barack Obama scrapped with immediate effect a 1995 policy that had given Cubans near-automatic entry to the United States if they managed to set foot on American soil, regardless of their visa status.



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