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 News from Around the Americas | August 2007 
Fleeing Cubans Reach U.S. Through Mexico
 Will Weissert - Associated Press
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| | Quintana Roo's state justice public prosecutor Vello Rodriguez holds a sheet with pictures of Luis Lara Morejon's body, in Cancun, Mexico, Tuesday, July 31, 2007. The body of Morejon, a Cuban-American who was under investigation in a migrant smuggling case, was found riddled with bullets along a road outside this Caribbean resort, authorities said Tuesday. (AP/Israel Leal) |
Havana, Cuba - The vast majority of Cubans sneaking off the island now enter the United States through Mexico after U.S. relatives pay thousands of dollars to organized crime networks that scoop them off Cuba's westernmost tip in souped-up speedboats.
The Mexico route is more dangerous than a direct, 90-mile voyage from Cuba to Florida, but there is less chance the U.S. Coast Guard will intervene. Nearly 90 percent of all undocumented Cubans who make it to America now come overland rather than reaching U.S. shores by boat, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
From the Mexican coast, Cubans then travel up to the U.S. border, where unlike other undocumented migrants, they are welcomed in under U.S. law.
Mexico, already struggling against organized crime, is paying the price for the migration shift, especially in Cancun, the nation's glittering Caribbean getaway. On Monday, investigators there found the body of a Cuban-American from Miami, Luis Lazaro Lara Morejon, handcuffed and with duct tape over his eyes. He had been shot 10 times, obliterating his face.
Days earlier, authorities had arrested at least eight people on suspicion of smuggling Cubans to Mexico, including six Cubans with U.S. residency or citizenship who had just been interviewed by U.S. authorities. Lara had connections to the suspects, Mexican investigators say.
"These gangs are well-organized, well-financed and very powerful," said Sen. Carlos Navarrete, who was among a group of Mexican lawmakers who came to Havana to discuss the issue with Cuban lawmakers in June. "They are a very serious problem for both governments _ Cuba and Mexico."
Some 9,296 Cubans arrived in the United States from Mexico between Oct. 1 and July 22, more than double the 4,589 who crossed or were picked up by the Coast Guard in the Florida Straits during the same period.
The Mexico route is now so popular that U.S. immigration officials call those who follow it "dusty foot" Cubans, a play on Washington's "wet-foot/dry foot" policy that lets Cuban migrants captured on U.S. soil stay in America, but sends those picked up at sea back to the island.
"That route, it has taken over," said a U.S. official interviewed at a Havana hotel on condition of anonymity because publishing his name would violate State Department protocol.
Mexican officials blame increased security along the U.S. coast, but the U.S. official said richer and more-powerful smuggling gangs are responsible.
A speedboat smuggler making the 120-mile dash from Cuba to Mexico's Yucatan peninsula can earn $30,000 per haul of 30 or more Cubans. They often rendezvous with yachts that can ferry large groups to shore undetected.
The money usually comes from relatives in the U.S. who pay smugglers up to $10,000 per person to get loved ones off the island. As the recent arrests suggest, most gangs employ U.S. residents of Cuban origin operating in Cancun and other locales along Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
The smugglers use satellite phones and GPS technology to coordinate late-night pickups in Cuba's western-most Pinar del Rio province. Their "go-fast" boats have up to three 275-horsepower motors, reducing the trip to 6 hours if they don't have to change course to escape detection.
Some Cubans try to reach the Yucatan on their own using makeshift rafts and boats, but it is easy to get lost in the Gulf of Mexico. One homemade vessel floated in the Gulf for 25 days before all but one of 19 Cubans on board were found dead in June.
Cuban authorities are barred from using force to stop the boats, except in self-defense. Instead, they contact the U.S. Coast Guard with the fleeing vessel's coordinates _ even if it is clearly headed to Mexico. And since combatting people-smuggling between Cuba and Mexico is not a top Coast Guard priority, U.S. officials generally just notify the Mexican navy.
Detentions of undocumented Cubans in Mexico have skyrocketed, from 254 in 2002 to 2,205 last year, according to Mexico's National Immigration Institute. But most are released after 90 days at immigration centers. Only 722 Cubans _ one third of all those arrested last year _ were repatriated to Cuba.
The rest make their way to the U.S. border, where entering Cubans rose from 6,130 in fiscal 2004 to 7,281 in 2005 and 8,677 last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.
Unlike other migrants, the Cubans have no need to run from the Border Patrol. They simply announce their nationality and ask to stay. As long as they don't have criminal records or dangerous health problems, they are allowed to remain in America and seek permanent residency after a year.
Mexican officials privately complain the U.S. accepts Cuban migrants too easily, but publicly acknowledge that their own authorities aren't doing enough to stop smugglers.
"We have to be very clear that there is a flow of people from Cuba to Mexico and that it is increasing," said Rosario Green, president of the Mexican Senate's foreign affairs committee, who was in Havana for the inter-parliamentary meeting. "Mexico shouldn't be a trampoline for the United States." |
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