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Obama's decision to unfreeze relations with Cuba has prompted a panic to leave and claim refugee status in US

Cubans believe automatic 'dry foot' refugee status will be abolished soon and have paid traffickers to reach the Mexico-US border

But 8,000 are now stuck in Costa Rica where land borders have been closed - and they have run out of money

Red Cross is warning of new humanitarian crisis with doctors called in to deal with illness in makeshift refuges

Refugees tell Daily Mail Online the crisis is of Obama's making because of his deal with the Castros

Thousands of Cubans are caught in a new refugee crisis triggered by President Obama's moves towards ending the embargo on the country, Daily Mail Online can reveal.

As many as 8,000 are living in squalor in Costa Rica where their attempts to reach the United States have stalled, with the central American country facing a growing humanitarian crisis over their presence.

The Cubans are trying to get to the US land border with Mexico, where they will be able to claim refugee status in America, and a rapid path to citizenship.

Thousands have fled the Communist country since Obama and Raul Castro last year ended more than 60 years of frozen relations.

They have moved in a panic prompted by fears that the detente would lead to the abolition of automatic refugee status for Cubans who reach the US land border.

The unforeseen consequence of a move to normalize relations has created a growing crisis in Central America.

In total 8,000 people are stranded in Costa Rica, which has become the final stop in a journey which for most began with flights to Ecuador, followed by long road trips through Colombia and Panama.

Costa Rica's neighbor to the north - Nicaragua - has closed its borders to Cubans seeking passage on a route which would take them on to Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and through Mexico to the US land border.

Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua's left-wing president, is a close ally of Castro, and his action is seen as being in line with attempts by the Havana regime to stop people fleeing.

But the decision to seal the border, taken by Ortega in November, has created a mounting refugee crisis in Costa Rica.

There thousands of people who have run out of money, having paid people traffickers tens of thousands of dollars to get them to the US land border, are now unable to go any further.

More than 4,500 are being housed in refugee camps along the Costa Rican border with Nicaragua, 3,000 more on the Panama crossing and 500 or so scattered elsewhere in the country.

Most of the camps are in La Cruz, in the province of Guanacaste. The area's population of 24,000 has grown by 25 percent because of the influx of Cuban refugees.

At one stage before Christmas, more than 150 Cubans were reaching Panama every day through Ecuador or Colombia.

All the temporary camps as a result are full to the brim and some Cubans have taken to sleeping on the streets while others have been taken in by Costa Rican families and churches.

Children, pregnant women and the elderly have been caught up in the impasse and the Red Cross in Costa Rica has been called into treat travelers for illnesses such as, diarrhea, dehydration, vomiting, and influenza.

Doctors have also had to deal with an outbreak of chickenpox among dozens of Cubans who have been quarantined in a church close to the border with Nicaragua.

TWO MONTHS ON THE ROAD AND NOT A CENT LEFT - BUT DETERMINED TO GET TO THE US

Many others are sleeping in the open on foam mattresses in temperatures that reach the nineties, although Costa Rica has opened 34 temporary shelters in places such as fire stations and schools to house others.

They are fed by volunteers and local officials in the affected border areas and lines for soup kitchens have become a familiar sight.

Groups of migrants sit on street corners while others look for free wifi signals in the few cafes in La Cruz to read up on the latest political moves to help them and to contact loved ones left behind in the Caribbean.

The growing humanitarian crisis is being blamed on President Obama's rush to cement relations with Cuba before he leaves office at the end of the year.

Refugees accuse the White House of 'insensitively' offering olive branch to Havana without giving clear indications of what future immigration policy will be towards Cubans.

'Obama should say categorically what will happen to Cubans. Will we still be welcomed in the United States...who knows?' said college lecturer Mirtha Vega, who is among the refugees.

'People got scared and left Cuba as soon as they could and there has been so much panic.

'America wanted us before and now we simply do not know and that is why this crisis has developed.

'Obama shook hands with Castro and everybody got scared. There are many people back home who are preparing to leave now for the US if they can manage it.'

Another refugee Carlos Alberto, 54, an economist, said: 'We are human beings who have fled our country and are now being treated like rats. America must take the blame for this and not just Nicaragua.

'For more than 50 years we have been promised freedom in America if we could make it there. What is Obama going to do in future for Cubans and what will the next President do when he has gone?'

Cubans who are able to get out of the Communist country have been given refugee status automatically since 1966, with President Clinton amending the law in 1995 to make it apply to so-called 'dry foot' arrivals - those who make it to US land border, rather than into territorial waters.

Jim Rodriguez, Costa Rica Red Cross sub director of operations, said: 'It is a very difficult situation with the refugees who need all the help that can be given to stop a larger humanitarian crisis.

'We are providing medical aid, food supplies, blankets, personal hygiene kits and help from hospitals for those who need it.

'There are some of the Cubans who have high blood pressure, diabetes and heart problems. There has also been an outbreak of chicken pox.

'These people feel safe with us because they have had very difficult times and all because they want a better life.'

None of the refugees spoken to by Daily Mail Online want to stay in Costa Rica or return to Cuba - all want to reach the US.

Three doctors interviewed by Daily Mail Online in the refugee camps said they decided to engage with human smugglers as they believe the US will close its doors soon.

They claimed they could no longer bear to spend the rest of their lives scraping a living on $25 dollars a month wages.

Another refugee, a college teacher from Havana, said she had dreamed of living in America since her early teens and the hopelessness of trying to teach in Cuba without enough books and few computers had forced her hand.

Alejandro Esteban, 23, an engineer from Havana, said: 'The greatest fear was that we may not be allowed into the United States if we remained in Cuba and did not leave immediately.

'But today the big worry is that we may be forced to go back to Cuba.

'We feel we are being used for political reasons and that our government has asked Nicaragua to stop us from going ahead to Mexico and then to the US.

'Nicaragua is an ally of Cuba and that speaks for itself. But we want the US to come and help us because there is too much suffering among the Cuban people here.

'Many have spent their life savings to come this far and have nothing left, absolutely nothing.

'We do not earn many dollars anyway in Cuba, so you can imagine how desperate everybody is.

Many of us have family in the US and many have left their husbands, wives, parents and even children behind in Cuba.'

Esteban paid $2,000 to traffickers to get him through Colombia after leaving Cuba at the beginning of November, but like his 8,000 fellow countrymen is now stranded in Costa Rica.

'I had to travel through the night times and pay the Colombian police when they stopped me and wanted to arrest me,' he said.

'We should be allowed our human rights of being allowed to travel. We are not cattle. We are humans and we want to enjoy the same rights that many millions and millions of people have.

'In the two months we have been forgotten and only the kind Costa Rican government and people are caring about us.'

The first attempt to break the refugee crisis may happen within days.

The Central American Integration System, a group of countries who share political and economic support, has come up with a plan to fly 250 refugees to San Salvador as a trial run, possibly on Wednesday.

But that would represent a fraction of the total numbers in Costa Rica, and if they have to pay for their tickets, most would be unable to afford to follow in subsequent flights.

The plan would also rely on the refugees moving from El Salvador to the US without being stopped at El Salvador's border with Guatemala, or by the Mexican authorities at the border between Guatemala and Mexico.

Daily Mail Online has asked the White House and State Department for comment. President Obama is, however, taking a close interest in the refugee crisis hitting Europe. He plans to host a United Nations summit on the issue later this year, it was announced before Christmas.

'PEOPLE WILL WELCOME US WITH HUGS WHEN WE MAKE IT TO THE U.S.'

'I FLED COMMUNISM FOR FREEDOM - BUT AM STUCK IN COSTA RICA'

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The refugee crisis created by Obama: Thousands flee Cuba to get to US

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Thousands of people have fled Cuba and are now in Costa Rica where concern is rising that they will fall victim to disease. They believed the US policy of refugee status is ending because of detente.

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Op-Ed Contributor

Washington - A standoff in recent weeks that has trapped hundreds of Cuban migrants at Costa Rica's border with Nicaragua as they try to reach the United States is a graphic demonstration that Washington's migration policy toward Cuba is no longer sustainable. Left unchanged it could produce a crisis on the scale of the 1980 Mariel boatlift or the 1994 balsero (rafters) crisis - if one hasn't begun already.

Current policy, based on migration accords negotiated with Havana in 1994 and 1995, commits the United States to accepting at least 20,000 legal Cuban immigrants annually, and to returning to Cuba migrants intercepted at sea as they try to enter the United States illegally.

Unilaterally, the United States also adopted a "wet foot/dry foot" policy, which allows Cubans who arrive in the United States ("dry foot") to remain in the country under a special status called parole and, a year later, become eligible under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 to seek permanent residency. No other foreign nationality enjoys such privileged status.

The Cuban government has long argued that these policies encourage illegal migration and human trafficking. Still, the problem of Cubans coming to the United States illegally has been relatively minor until recently.

In the years since the migration agreements were signed, about 4,000 Cubans annually have eluded the United States Coast Guard, reached Florida beaches, and claimed "dry foot" status. Some 2,000 to 3,000 others have been intercepted at sea ("wet foot") each year and returned to Cuba. Because crossing the Florida Strait on rickety rafts or dilapidated boats is so dangerous, and the chances of being caught by the Coast Guard are high, the flow of illegal migrants remained manageable.

It is manageable no longer. The number of migrants has surged since last December, when President Obama and his Cuban counterpart, Raúl Castro, announced their intention to normalize relations. Would-be immigrants fear that reconciliation foreshadows repeal of the Cuban Adjustment Act, prompting Cuban migrants to act now lest they miss their chance.

With that in mind, Cubans have found an air-land route to the United States on which everyone can be a "dry foot" who can expect entry. In the past 12 months, more than 45,000 Cubans entered the United States from Mexico - without having to risk crossing a perilous desert as Mexicans and Central Americans do.

The new route is possible because in 2013, the Cuban government abolished its requirement that citizens obtain government permission to travel abroad. Today, most Cubans can travel to any country that will grant them a visa. Ecuador even admitted them without one until last Tuesday, and Guyana still does.

As a result, would-be migrants have been flying to Ecuador to begin a long, surreptitious trek north, without visas, through Colombia, Central America and Mexico. At the Texas border, they simply declare their nationality and are admitted under the "dry foot" policy.

Hiring "coyotes," as smugglers of migrants are called, to guide the trek is expensive, but many Cubans have family members in the United States willing to pay. Recently, Cubans armed with cellphones have been crowdsourcing their own smuggling routes by following advice on social media from those who have gone before them.

The current crisis in Central America was triggered on Nov. 10 when Costa Rican authorities broke up a smuggling operation, leaving 1,600 Cubans stranded. When Costa Rica tried to send them north, Nicaragua closed the border. As more Cubans arrive daily, the number stuck there has reached 4,000, with no end in sight.

At a recent meeting of diplomats from the region, Costa Rica proposed creating a "humanitarian corridor" that would allow Cubans free passage to the United States border. Nicaragua rejected the proposal, but even the suggestion of such a plan should be a red flag for Washington. Latin Americans are getting tired of enforcing a United States immigration policy toward Cubans that isn't working and discriminates against their own citizens. The contrast between Washington's privileged treatment of Cuban migrants and its coldness toward Central Americans, including children fleeing criminal violence, is indefensible.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration has repeatedly declared that it has no intention of changing current migration policy, for fear that any hint of change will touch off a stampede. United States diplomats reaffirmed that position at a meeting with their Cuban counterparts last Monday. The meeting produced no new thinking about how to resolve the crisis.

There is a solution to this conundrum. If Cuban migrants trying to enter the United States by land were treated the same as those intercepted at sea and returned to Cuba, the incentive to make the long, dangerous passage north would be drastically reduced.

This would not require amending the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allows for the adjustment of status only for Cubans who have been admitted or paroled into the United States. It would require only changing the "dry foot" policy of admitting on parole anyone who sets foot on United States territory. That policy is a matter of executive discretion. To avoid a last-minute exodus from Cuba, it could be rescinded by the attorney general without prior notice.

An end to the "wet foot/dry foot" distinction should be accompanied by a significant increase in the number of Cubans admitted legally, so that those who want to immigrate to the United States have more opportunities to do so safely.

But to do nothing is to face a slow-motion migration crisis that will be interminable. Cuba will not reimpose travel limits on its citizens, and Latin America will not cooperate indefinitely by blocking Cubans' transit when Washington's policy is to let in all Cubans who arrive - and keep other Latin Americans out.

For Washington to refuse to change a policy when new circumstances have rendered it utterly ineffective makes about as much sense as King Canute trying to hold back the tide.

William M. LeoGrande is a professor of government at American University in Washington, D.C., and a co-author with Peter Kornbluh of "Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana."

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Opinion | A New Crisis of Cuban Migration

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The longstanding policy of treating Cuban migrants differently from other Latin Americans is outdated and untenable.

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Cuban migrants en route to Florida were intercepted by the Coast Guard in August. Those captured at sea are sent back to Cuba. Credit Credit United States Coast Guard

MIAMI - In an unexpected echo of the refugee crisis from two decades ago, a rising tide of Cubans in rickety, cobbled-together boats is fleeing the island and showing up in the waters off Florida.

Leonardo Heredia, a 24-year-old Cuban baker, for example, tried and failed to reach the shores of Florida eight times.

Last week, he and 21 friends from his Havana neighborhood gathered the combined know-how from their respective botched migrations and made a boat using a Toyota motor, scrap stainless steel and plastic foam. Guided by a pocket-size Garmin GPS, they finally made it to Florida on Mr. Heredia's ninth attempt.

"Things that were bad in Cuba are now worse," Mr. Heredia said. "If there was more money in Cuba to pay for the trips, everyone would go."

Mr. Heredia is one of about 25,000 Cubans who arrived by land and sea in the United States without travel visas in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, according to government figures. He, like many others, is also an unexpected throwback to a time that experts thought had long passed: the era when Cubans boarded homemade vessels built from old car parts and inner tubes, hoping for calm seas and favorable winds. As the number of Cubans attempting the voyage nearly doubled in the past two years, the number of vessels unfit for the dangerous 90-mile crossing also climbed.

Not since the rafter crisis of 1994 has the United States received so many Cuban migrants. The increase highlights the consequences of a United States immigration policy that gives preferential treatment to Cubans and recent reforms on the island that loosened travel restrictions, and it puts a harsh spotlight on the growing frustration of a post-Fidel Castro Cuba.

More Cubans took to the sea last year than in any year since 2008, when Raúl Castro officially took power and the nation hummed with anticipation. Some experts fear that the recent spike in migration could be a harbinger of a mass exodus, and they caution that the unseaworthy vessels have already left a trail of deaths.

"I believe there is a silent massive exodus," said Ramón Saúl Sánchez, an exile leader in Miami who has helped families of those who died at sea. "We are back to those times, like in 1994, when people built little floating devices and took to the ocean, whether they had relatives here or not."

Although the number migrating by sea hardly compares with the summer of 1994, Mr. Sánchez said the number of illegal and legal Cuban immigrants combined has now surpassed the number of those who arrived during the crisis 20 years ago.

The United States Coast Guard spotted 3,722 Cubans in the past year, almost double the number who were intercepted in 2012. Under the migration accord signed after the 1994 crisis, those captured at sea are sent back to Cuba. Those who reach land get to stay, which the Cuban government has long argued draws many people into making the dangerous voyage.

For the past 10 years, sophisticated smuggling networks were responsible for the vast majority of Cuban migration. A crackdown by the American authorities and a lack of financing available to Cubans on the island have shifted the migration method back to what it was two decades ago, when images of desperate people aboard floating wooden planks gave Cuban migrants the "rafters" moniker.

"We have seen vessels made out of Styrofoam and some made out of inner tubes," said Cmdr. Timothy Cronin, deputy chief of enforcement for the Coast Guard's Miami district. "These vessels have no navigation equipment, no lifesaving equipment. They rarely have life jackets with them. They are really unsafe."

About 20 percent of the vessels used in 2008 were homemade, but this past year, 87 percent of the migrants spotted at sea were riding rustic boats that the passengers had built themselves, Coast Guard statistics show.

Julio Sánchez, 38, a welder from Havana who traveled with Mr. Heredia, said most Cubans do not have the money to pay smugglers, and are instead forced to spend months gathering supplies for their journey.

"In our group, some people gave ideas, some gave money and some gave labor," Mr. Sánchez said. The trip from a port east of Havana to an obscure Florida key cost them a total of $5,000, a fraction of the $200,000 or more that smugglers would have charged such a large group.

Experts said the recession cut the flow of financing for such journeys, because it was Miami relatives who made the payments. Many of the people arriving now - like those in Mr. Sánchez's group - have no family in the United States to help pay.

"If I had to save $10,000 with my monthly salary of $17, I would not get here until I was 80 or 90 years old," said Yannio La O, 31, an elementary school wrestling coach who arrived in Miami last week after a shipwreck landed him in Mexico.

He and 31 others departed from Manzanillo, in southern Cuba, in late August on a boat they built over the course of three months. They ran into engine trouble, and the food they brought was contaminated by a sealant they carried aboard to patch holes in the hull. They spent 24 days lost at sea.

"Every day at 6 a.m. or 6 p.m., somebody died," Mr. La O said.

Nine people, including a pregnant woman, died and were thrown overboard, and six more got on inner tubes and disappeared before the Mexican Navy rescued the survivors, Mr. Sánchez said. Two more died at shore. Mr. La O said he survived by drinking urine and spearing fish.

Their deaths came as the United States Coast Guard found four bodies floating in the water 23 miles east of Hollywood, Fla. Their relatives in Miami identified their corpses by their tattoos and scars.

Mr. La O became one of the more than 22,500 Cubans who arrived in the United States by land last fiscal year - most of them in Texas. That is nearly double the number who did so in 2012.

Some of those migrants flew to Mexico and then requested entry at the Texas border. Relaxed travel rules in Cuba now allow people to exit the country more freely, a change that experts say plays a part in the surge in Southwest border arrivals. Other people, like Mr. La O, made the first leg of the journey by sea to Central America or Mexico.

Ted Henken, a Cuba scholar at Baruch College in New York, said Washington should be worried about the increase in migration, because it demonstrates that Cuba's recent economic reforms have failed to help the majority of Cubans, making the nation vulnerable to a catastrophic event.

"If some triggering event or series of events were to happen, like with the Venezuela aid or major unrest, or a hurricane, we could have another 'balsero' crisis or Mariel," Mr. Henken said, using the Spanish word for "rafter" and noting the 1980 boatlift.

A spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Michael Flanagan, the deputy chief patrol agent for the United States Border Patrol's Miami sector, said good weather, particularly the lack of hurricanes in recent years, has played a part in facilitating travel. Although the 91 percent increase in Cuban landings was "significant and it has our attention," he said, it was not "remarkable."

"Even if half the people who leave from Cuba do not survive, that means half of them did," Mr. La O said, speaking from his grandmother's house in Miami, where he arrived last week. "I would tell anyone in Cuba to come. It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Rickety Boats, Cuban Migrants Again Flee to U.S.. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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In Rickety Boats, Cuban Migrants Again Flee to U.S.

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The number of Cubans attempting the voyage to the United States has nearly doubled in the past two years, putting the spotlight on the growing frustration with a post-Fidel Cuba.

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Early Tuesday morning, the first of forty-five flights left Costa Rica, carrying a hundred and eighty Cuban migrants to El Salvador, where they boarded buses that travelled north through Guatemala to Mexico. In Mexico, the government granted them temporary visas, which give them twenty days to travel north on their own and cross the U.S. border. Their chances of making it are uncertain, but if they reach the border, they will be granted entry and allowed to apply for green cards within one year of their arrival, as long as they pass standard background checks. In the next three weeks, eight thousand Cubans are scheduled to make the trip, which costs five hundred and fifty-five dollars per person; a travel agency made the plane, food, and bus arrangements, at the behest of the governments of the countries along the route. If the process goes smoothly, the plan could be replicated in Panama, where three thousand Cubans are currently waiting to travel to the U.S.

For several years now, there has been grimly regular news of waves of Latin Americans seeking refuge in the U.S., mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, where gang and drug violence have surged. At the same time, a stream of Cuban migrants has not commanded the same attention, but has revealed some of the vagaries and inconsistencies of American immigration law. Last year, forty-four thousand Cubans sought asylum in the U.S., an eighty-three-per-cent increase over the previous year. Most left out of concern that the new relations between the two countries could put an end to Cubans' privileged immigration status, which, since 1966, has allowed them to easily obtain green cards. (The Cuban government has always objected to the American policy.)

Rather than boarding boats to cross the ninety-mile Florida Straits, many of the Cuban migrants have flown south to Ecuador, drawn by the country's lax visa requirements, and from there travelled overland to the U.S., through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Mexico. The reason for their elliptical route is simple: in the mid-nineties, the U.S. created a policy, intended to tamp down Cuban immigration, called "wet foot, dry foot." If Cubans are caught on the water, the U.S. Coast Guard will send them back to Cuba, but if they show up on land-at the Texas border, for instance-they are granted entry and allowed to apply for a green card.

These migrants have had to navigate different visa requirements along the way, some of which are tougher (and costlier) than others. Still, the trip, in spite of its inevitable dangers, was a straight shot north. Then, two months ago, Nicaragua, which has a close relationship with the Cuban government, and is embroiled in a long-standing border dispute with Costa Rica, started denying Cubans visas. As a result, a growing number of Cubans are stranded south of the Nicaraguan border, in Costa Rica. Even before Nicaragua started denying visas, Costa Rica was struggling to handle the influx of Cuban migrants. This past September, Costa Rican authorities reported that they had stopped twelve thousand undocumented Cubans over the previous year alone. (By comparison, they had stopped fifty in 2011.) And in November, around the time the Nicaraguan government started denying visas, the Costa Rican government dislodged an enormous smuggling operation along its northern border.

Last weekend, I spoke to Katia Rodríguez, the director of Costa Rica's immigration authority, about the government sting. For nearly ten months, the government tracked at least twelve smugglers in a network that spanned Miami, Ecuador, and Guatemala. "We've always had smuggling and illegal immigration, but it was limited to lone coyotes or middle-men," Rodríguez told me. "This was an international operation of unprecedented scope." She described an entire criminal hierarchy, with smugglers organized into teams that dealt with cross-country communications, transportation, and payment logistics. Fourteen Cubans, along with twelve Nicaraguans, were detained in a preliminary sweep of several houses near the Nicaraguan border; all of them were eventually deported to Nicaragua, where the Cubans continued north on their journey to the U.S., according to the Tico Times. Rodríguez said that four hundred people were arrested in the operation, and that thousands more eluded roundups in stash houses along the border.

Shortly after the operation, Costa Rica renewed talks with neighboring countries about relieving the strain of processing so many migrants, but it failed to reach a deal that would allow the thousands of stranded Cubans to cross into Nicaragua. So, late last month, seven Central American countries-Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize-agreed to the airlifts. Rodríguez told me the agreement was strictly provisional, echoing a statement by the Costa Rican foreign minister. Costa Rican authorities have voiced exasperation with Nicaragua, but Rodríguez suggested that her government's deeper source of frustration is the American policy on Cuban migrants. The Costa Rican flight agreement "exists just because of the U.S. law that grants preferential treatment to some migrants," she said.

In an effort to slow Cuban migration, the U.S. State Department has maintained that it has no plans to change its policy. There has been no word of any American involvement in the airlift agreement, but at the very least, the seven participating countries could have been confident that the U.S. would not turn the Cubans away at the border. "If it's a safe-passage scenario we're talking about, then the U.S. and Mexico have to be involved in the agreement somehow, too," Eric Farnsworth, a former State Department official, who had been stationed in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, told me. "These countries are trying to create a pipeline to the U.S."

The preferential treatment for Cuban migrants has created resentment among other Central American immigrants. Tens of thousands of people fleeing violence in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala have arrived in the U.S. since the summer of 2014 and applied for asylum. According to the Times, of the nearly thousand of those cases that judges have heard so far, eighty per cent have ended with deportation. The U.S. has been chartering fourteen flights a week since 2014 to send these migrants back to Central America.

Planes heading south from the U.S. carry deportees, while planes heading north, from Costa Rica, deliver Cuban immigrants most of the way to the U.S. border. "The Obama Administration has two problems," William LeoGrande, a regional expert and co-author of the book "Backchannel to Cuba," wrote in an e-mail. "One is the striking contrast between the treatment of Cubans looking for economic opportunity and Central American families fleeing gang violence. The second problem is that the open door for Cubans on the Texas border, combined with the greater freedom to travel the Cuban government has given its people since 2013, means the flow of Cubans through Mexico is not going to diminish anytime soon."

Last week, the Salvadoran Foreign Minister Hugo Martínez complained to the American press about a double standard. "It's a policy that allows one set of migrants to be treated in a privileged manner and another set of migrants in a discriminatory fashion," he said. Geoff Thale, of the Washington Office on Latin America, pointed out to me the insecurity of the Cuban airlift arrangement. "I'm concerned about the humanitarian question of bringing thousands of immigrants to Mexico, and then leaving them to their own devices, where they can be preyed on by smugglers," he said. One Cuban immigrant told the local press, "We've heard a lot that in Mexico there are groups like the Zetas that make attacks on roads." She said that once she arrived in Mexico she planned to fly to a town closer to the U.S. border, to avoid the risks of crossing the country.

The surest way for the U.S. to quiet the current controversy over Cuban immigrants is to recast its policy, which was codified in the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966. But making any change to that law has always been highly contentious, perhaps never more so than now. "It is extremely unlikely Obama will change the policy in an election year," LeoGrande told me. "The Cuban-Americans who are his strongest supporters are recent arrivals who made use of it themselves and have family on the island they want to get out." Two of the leading Republican candidates for President are Cuban-Americans (one more reluctantly self-identifying than the other) who have excoriated Obama on the campaign trail for his decision to normalize relations with Cuba.

Still, the politics surrounding reform of the Cuban Adjustment Act have been shifting, mainly among Republicans who were once loyal to the old Miami consensus but are now sounding an anti-immigrant note. Last year, the Sun-Sentinel uncovered a Cuban-American fraud network that, capitalizing on the ability of its perpetrators to move freely between the two countries, made more than two billion dollars throughout twenty years. Last fall, Republican lawmakers cited that network when they sponsored a bill to "end amnesty" for Cubans. Democrats from border states, like Henry Cuellar, from Laredo, Texas, where about ninety Cubans reportedly arrive each day, are decrying the policy, too. Not only has it flooded their border with Cuban migrants but it has highlighted the comparatively harsh treatment of Mexicans, who have struggled to get immigration courts to recognize their asylum claims. "There's going to be more debate about the policy than the U.S. government wants," Thale said.

Jonathan Blitzer is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
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Jonathan Blitzer writes about the pressures and resentments in Latin American countries over the U.S. policy on Cuban immigrants.

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