City of Doral Government Center
8401 NW 53rd Terrace
Doral, FL 33166
305-59 DORAL (305-593-6725)
Media Note
Immigrant Services in Doral Are Ready
Doral, FL – January 20, 2016 Mayor Luigi Boria hosted a briefing by leaders from the Doral offices of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Church World Services; two Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that provide relocation and support services to Cubans and other migrants under a grant from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), a component of the Department of Homeland Security.
Oscar D. Rivera, Director at the Miami office of Church World Services (CWS) recalled, “Our two organizations handled over 30,000 migrants during the Cuban exodus of 1994, the 8,000 in Costa Rica are manageable, especially when we have good communications and coordination.”
“We are already serving between 10 and 20 Cuban migrants each day, most from traditional air, land and sea routes. We are already seeing some of the migrants from Costa Rica. It’s important to remember that those 8,000 migrants in Costa Rica will not show up all at once. We will be adding a few additional cases to our normal daily caseload,” explained Juan F. Lopez, Associate Director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Frank Figueroa, Administrator of the Cuban and Haitian program for CWS added, “The majority of our cases, around 80%, are family unification cases. So it is easy to place them with relatives in the South Florida area, the other 20% will require more service and support.”
The NGO directors thanked Mayor Boria for his efforts in working with other lawmakers to raise awareness on Capitol Hill. They noted that USCIS has become more active in reaching out to their organizations and is expected to be a good partner.
