Comments on: Bad Missionaries (Cont’d)

By: edolescent

edolescent — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 17:25:31 +0000

Whether the purpose of the trips was to drink mojitos/libres or to visit family members, it was equally obvious that the travelers were not doing missionary work for non-existent churches. I don’t buy that anyone was duped by this scam other than the licensing authorities.

By: Clif Burns

Clif Burns — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 16:30:14 +0000

Anonymous makes a good point. My story about the returning American who was drinking mojitos in Havana was meant to underline the stupidity of the defendants who would have had to have known that given the sheer number of people involved — most of whom would indeed be Cuban-Americans returning to visit family — it would be inevitable that a number would admit that they were not there for religious missions.

The issue will be whether the US Attorney goes after the people who traveled on these licenses. The press release distinctly left open that possibility. Anonymous may well be right that many or most might have been duped and believed the travel legitimate. On the other hand, there may well be evidence that the many knew that they had to be prepared to lie to CBP on their re-entry into the U.S.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:30:48 +0000

You are missing the point that there are essentially thousands of people who were duped into thinking they could travel to Cuba with these licenses. The close knit community of Dade county has given millions to these criminals thinking they were in effect obeying, not breaking the law, to travel to Cuba to see family members.

Unfortunately you joke that they are American tourists who drink mojitos when in fact they are generally Cubans and Cuban Americans who return to the island to care for and visit family members.

By: Mike Deal

Mike Deal — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 07:25:51 +0000

Using “Assumption” in connection with “Church of Christ” should have been a dead giveaway since Churches of Christ do not celebrate or even recognize any dates on the liturgical calendar, not even Easter or Christmas, let alone the Assumption.

By: Linda

Linda — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 21:12:44 +0000

Two comments:

1) It’s obvious the feds did no checking before issuing the licenses.

2) Although mojitos are good I’ll bet the tourists were drinking Cuba Libres.