Cubans making risky boat trip to Florida, another immigration challenge for Biden administration

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans desperate to leave the island’s flailing economy and reunite with family in the U.S. but unable to get visas in their own country have been forced to fly to Central America and make tortuous journeys north, or navigate the Florida Straits in rickety vessels.

More than 500 Cuban immigrants have come ashore in the Florida Keys since last weekend. It is a dangerous 160-kilometre trip in often rickety boats, but more Cubans are taking the risk amid deepening and compounding political and economic crises at home.

“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 The Miami Herald shortly after coming ashore on Tuesday in Key Largo.

The Coast Guard tries to interdict Cuban migrants at sea and return them. Since the U.S. government’s new fiscal year began on Oct. 1, 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 2020-21 fiscal year at the height of the pandemic.

But an unknown number have made it to land and will likely get to stay.

Dry Tortugas National Park, a group of seven islands 110 kilometres west of Key West, remained closed to visitors Wednesday as the U.S. evacuated migrants who came ashore there earlier in the week. Officials did not know when it would reopen.

In Marathon, some 72 kilometres 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. 

Ramon Raul Sanchez with the Cuban-American group Movimiento Democracia went to the Keys to check on the situation. He told the AP that he met a group of 22 Cubans who had just arrived. They were standing along the main road, waiting for U.S. authorities to pick them up. Sanchez and Keys officials said the Joe Biden administration needs a more co-ordinated response.

“There is a migration and humanitarian crisis, and it is necessary for the president to respond by helping local authorities,” Sanchez said.

Cubans also among those trying to enter at southern border

Grappling with the biggest flood of Cuban migrants in decades, the U.S. reopened its long-closed legal pathway on Wednesday by resuming all visa services at its Embassy in Havana.

In addition to economic struggles exacerbated by the pandemic, Cubans also took note of their government’s harsh response to rare protests on the island in 2021, which included hefty prison sentences doled out to minors.

Some also arrive by land, flying to Nicaragua, then travelling north through Honduras and Guatemala into Mexico. In the 2021-22 fiscal year, 220,000 Cubans were stopped at the U.S.-Mexican border, almost six times as many as the previous year.

In late December, U.S. authorities reported stopping Cubans 34,675 times along the Mexico border in November, up from 28,848 times in October.

Callan Garcia, a Florida immigration attorney, said most Cubans who reach U.S. soil tell Border Patrol agents they can’t find adequate work at home. They are then flagged “expedited for removal” as having entered the country illegally. But that does not mean they actually will be removed quickly, or ever.

Because the U.S. and Cuba do not have formal diplomatic relations, the American 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 to get work permits, driver’s licences and Social Security numbers.

Garcia said many remain without official status the rest of their lives; some Cubans who came in the 1980 Mariel boatlift still are designated “expedited for removal.”

“They’re just sort of here with a floating order for removal that can’t be executed,” Garcia said.

WATCH | Planned expiry of Title 42 put off by court decision:

U.S. Supreme Court delays end of pandemic border restrictions

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted a last-minute extension to Title 42, a pandemic-era border restriction denying asylum to migrants first introduced under former president Donald Trump.

The full resumption of visa work at the Havana Embassy comes after a series of migration talks and visits by U.S. officials in recent months. Recent small steps are a far cry from relations under President Barack Obama, who eased some decades-long sanctions during his time in office, much of it undone by successor Donald Trump.

Under Biden, the U.S. has eased some restrictions on things like remittances and family travel from Miami to Cuba.

Title 42 limbo

The Biden administration has been heavily criticized by Republicans on the immigration front, but has been hamstrung to a significant degree by court decisions.

The Supreme Court has kept in place Title 42 restrictions, after Biden acted to end them last spring. Republican state officials sued in response.

Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma:

Title 42 was invoked to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in 2020, but Americans are carrying on with life as the coronavirus evolves. The order allows for most migrants to be expelled, encouraging repeated crossings between border points, critics say.

Biden has yet to lay out any systemic changes to manage an expected significant increase of migrants applying for asylum should the health restrictions end.

Immigration and fentanyl production emanating from Mexican labs and making its way to the U.S. and Canada are expected to be among the topics when Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are hosted by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador during a two-day summit beginning Monday.