More than 500 Cuban immigrants have come ashore on the Florida Keys since the weekend, the latest in a large and increasing number of migrants fleeing the island nation and stretching thin US border agencies on land and at sea.
It is a dangerous 160km trip in often rickety boats — unknown thousands have perished over the years — but more Cubans are taking the risk amid deepening and compounding political and economic crises at home.
A smaller number of Haitians are also fleeing their country’s economic and political woes and arriving by boat in Florida.
Photo: AP
The US Coast Guard tries to intercept Cuban migrants at sea and return them. Since the US government’s new fiscal year began on Oct. 1 last year, about 4,200 have been stopped at sea — or about 43 a day. That was up from 17 per day in the previous fiscal year, and just two per day during the one before that.
However, an unknown number have made it to land and are likely to be allowed to stay.
“I would prefer to die to reach my dream and help my family. The situation in Cuba is not very good,” Jeiler del Toro Diaz told reporters shortly after coming ashore on Tuesday in Key Largo.
Dry Tortugas National Park, a group of seven islands 110km west of Key West, remained closed to visitors on Wednesday as the US evacuated migrants who came ashore there earlier in the week.
Normally, about 255 tourists a day arrive by boat and seaplane to tour the islands and Fort Jefferson, which was built 160 years ago.
In Marathon, about 72km northeast of Key West, about two dozen migrants were being held in a fenced-in area outside a Customs and Border Protection station where tents had been erected to provide shade. When journalists tried to speak with the migrants through the fence, US Border Patrol employees told them to leave.
Ramon Raul Sanchez with the Cuban-American group Movimiento Democracia went to the Keys to check on the situation. He said that he met a group of 22 Cubans who had just arrived. They were standing along a main road, waiting for US authorities to pick them up. Sanchez and Keys officials said that Washington needs a more coordinated response.
“There is a migration and humanitarian crisis, and it is necessary for the president to respond by helping local authorities,” Sanchez said.
Cubans are willing to take the risk because those who make it to US soil almost always get to stay, even if their legal status is murky. They also arrive by land, flying to Nicaragua, then traveling north through Honduras and Guatemala into Mexico.
In the previous fiscal year, 220,000 Cubans were stopped at the US-Mexico border, almost six times as many as the previous year.
Florida immigration attorney Callan Garcia said most Cubans who reach US soil tell Border Patrol agents that they cannot find adequate work at home. They are then flagged “expedited for removal” as having entered the country illegally.
However, that does not mean they would be removed quickly, or at all.
Because the US and Cuba do not have formal diplomatic relations, the US government has no way to repatriate them. Cubans are released, but given an order that requires them to contact federal immigration authorities periodically to confirm their address and status. They are allowed work permits, driver’s licenses and social security numbers, but cannot apply for permanent residency or citizenship.
Garcia said that such a situation could last for the rest of their lives, citing Cubans who arrived in the 1980 Mariel boatlift as still being designated as “expedited for removal.”
“They’re just sort of here with a floating order for removal that can’t be executed,” Garcia said.
A small percentage of Cuban immigrants tell Border Patrol agents they are fleeing political persecution and are “paroled,” Garcia said.
Under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, they are released until they can appear before an immigration judge to make their case. If approved, they could receive permanent residency and later apply for citizenship.
On the other hand, Haitian immigrants almost always get sent back, even though political persecution and violence is rife there, along with severe economic hardship.
“That inconsistency is something that immigrant rights advocates have always pointed to,” Garcia said.
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