Havana – The vast majority of Cubans sneaking off the island enter the United States through Mexico after U.S. relatives pay thousands of dollars to organized-crime networks that scoop them off Cuba’s western tip in souped-up speedboats.
The Mexico route is more dangerous than a direct, 90-mile voyage to Florida, but there is less chance the U.S. Coast Guard will intervene. Nearly 90 percent of undocumented Cubans who make it to America come overland rather than reaching U.S. shores by boat, said U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
From the Mexican coast, Cubans travel up to the U.S. border, where, unlike others without documentation, they are welcomed in under U.S. law.
Mexico, already struggling against organized crime, is paying the price for the migration shift, especially in Cancún. 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 in a group of Mexican lawmakers who went to Havana to discuss the issue with Cuban lawmakers in June. “They are a very serious problem for both governments – Cuba and Mexico.”
An estimated 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 in the same period.
The Mexico route is so popular that U.S. immigration officials call those who follow it “dusty foot” Cubans, a play on the “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.
A speedboat smuggler making the 120-mile dash to the Yucatan peninsula can earn $30,000 per haul of 30 or more Cubans.
