Cuban migrants are coming to the United States at the highest number in four decades, with about 150,000 expected this year, according to senior US officials, as the economic and political situation on the island grows more desperate.
For decades, Cubans trying to flee repression, food insecurity and economic devastation boarded rickety boats, risking their lives to reach American shores.
Now they’re coming in record numbers, but this time on foot, their flight aided by Nicaragua, which dropped its visa requirements for Cubans late last year, giving them a foothold in Central America to travel overland through Mexico to the United States. US officials have accused Nicaragua’s authoritarian president Daniel Ortega of enacting policies to pressure the United States to withdraw sanctions against his country.
The wave of Cubans trying to cross the southern border represents just some of the migrants who have sometimes overwhelmed border officials as the number of undocumented border crossings continues to rise under the Biden administration. March set a record for the number of people caught illegally in one month in two decades: 221,303.
Since October — the start of the federal government’s fiscal year 2022 — nearly 79,000 Cubans have arrived at the United States’ southern border, according to Customs and Border Protection figures, more than in the previous two years combined. In March, more than 32,000 Cubans arrived at the border, most of them flying first to Nicaragua and then traveling overland to the United States, according to a senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to continued dialogue with the Cuban government .
The official said visa-free travel to Nicaragua encouraged migrants to spend their savings on paying smugglers for the trip, adding that some fell prey to human trafficking by criminal groups.
The number is the highest since the Mariel boat lift in 1980, when 125,000 Cubans migrated to the United States after the island nation opened its seaports to American ships to evacuate anyone who wanted to leave.
Public discontent In Cuba, massive protests across the country have been simmering since last summer over mounting inflation, chronic food and drug shortages and ongoing power outages. During the Obama administration, the United States significantly relaxed restrictions on travel and money transfers to Cuba, but they were revived under former President Donald J. Trump, dealing a severe economic blow.
The demonstrations took the communist government by surprise and responded with one of the worst crackdowns in decades. More than 700 Cubans have been charged with taking part in protests, including some teenagers who were sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The deteriorating political and economic conditions are fueling the growing exodus.
The government of Nicaragua in November lifted the visa requirement for Cuba and opened a land route for migrants hesitant to take the perilous sea journey to US shores. Since then, the number of flights to Managua from Havana has skyrocketed.
“I think we see governments trying to weaponize migration because they know it’s causing political disruption in the recipient countries,” said Andrew Selee, the president of the Migration Policy Institute, a research institute in Washington.
Selee and other analysts said Nicaragua likely used Cuban migrants to pressure the United States to lift sanctions against Ortega and his inner circle. The move has been compared to Belarus lifting visa requirements for Iraqis last year to facilitate their entry into the European Union, in retaliation for sanctions the bloc imposed on Belarus for its contested elections.
“They’re not fools,” Mr. Selee said. “The government in Managua knew this would force the US to come to the negotiating table at some point.” Still, it’s unclear whether the relaxed migration rules would bring about changes in US policy.
The government of Nicaragua has not responded to questions from The Times. The Cuban government has not responded to requests for comment.
Many Cubans are desperate to leave, even if it means going into debt to embark on a dangerous journey. Cubans describe selling everything they have — houses, clothes, and furniture — and taking out loans with high interest rates to raise the thousands of dollars they need to get to the United States, even though the average salary on the island is about $46 a month.
Zenen Hernández, 35, was one of 414 Cubans who crossed the Rio Grande to the United States on April 5, out of a total of 1,488 undocumented migrants who crossed that part of the Texas border (about 245 miles) that day.
“Food and medicine are scarce,” Mr Hernández said, describing conditions in Cuba. “It’s just poverty.”
The Cuban government blames the United States’ decades-long embargo on the nation for its economic woes.
The economy was bleak before the pandemic hit, but Mr. Hernández scraped by and sold bread and chips. By the summer of 2020, the situation had become untenable. When Nicaragua opened its borders to Cubans, he decided it was time to go.
“I had to sell my house,” he says.
The cost was high: $16,000 for the flight to Nicaragua and the subsequent 1,800-mile trek to the United States—often on foot—through the jungles, mountains, and rivers of Central America and Mexico. Along the way, migrants are routinely threatened and extorted by the police and attacked by criminal organizations who kidnap and beat them for ransom.
When Mr. Hernández was asked to describe his journey, he choked on the memory of the miserable journey.
“I have no words,” he said. “They’re robbing you – the police, the smugglers. They rob you.”
The pent-up demand for legal crossings is another factor driving migration. In 2017, the Trump administration cut staffing levels at the US embassy in Cuba after a series of unexplained health problems known as “Havana syndrome” affected US personnel there.
The withdrawal forced Cubans to apply for visas at the US embassy in Guyana, a journey that was too expensive for many. The move also prevented the United States from honoring its commitment to issue 20,000 immigrant visas to Cubans annually, as part of a 1994 agreement between the countries to provide a legal pathway and discourage illegal migration.
This week, the US embassy in Havana will conduct the first interviews for immigrant visa applicants since 2017, one of the senior US officials said.
The first high-level talks between Cuba and the United States since 2018 took place in late April and focused on restoring regular migration channels. The Cuban government asked the United States to adhere to the agreement to issue 20,000 immigrant visas annually; the US government asked Havana to begin accepting illegally arrived Cuban deportees.
The US official said the two sides are likely to meet again in six months.
“If the talks are successful, they will return to a formula that worked before, providing Cubans with a real, viable legal channel to come to the US in exchange for the deportation of those not using the legal channel,” he said. mr. Selee, from the Institute for Migration Policy. “Migration is a rare point of cooperation between countries that has really worked.”
For decades, Cubans migrating to the United States enjoyed preferential treatment. Those caught at sea were sent back, but those who reached American soil were allowed to stay, under a policy commonly referred to as “wet foot, dry foot.” President Obama ended the policy in 2017.
The bilateral talks preceded the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in June, where countries will seek to agree on a regional framework for migration and financial support for Latin American countries with large migrant populations. Colombia last year received $800 million in loans from multilateral lenders, including the World Bank, to support the 1.7 million Venezuelan migrants it houses, the kind of aid the summit will seek to expand across the region.
While the Biden administration has maintained that only democratic governments will be invited to the summit, Cuba was invited to the previous two, in 2015 and 2018, and hopes to be invited this year.
But US officials said that was yet to be decided, angering the Cuban government.
“The United States is once again turning to sources and lies to assert the right won by Cuba and its people to attend these summits on an equal basis with the rest of the countries in the region,” the Cuban minister said. of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodriguez tweeted on April 25. This is “something disgraceful”.
Bryan Avelar and Frances Robles reporting contributed.