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Immigration: Cubans Enter U.S. at Texas-Mexico Border

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"These Cubans come here, tell some bullshit story at the border and they get their green card," Ybarra says. "I came here seeking freedom, not hot dogs. My generation, we are refugees; they are immigrants. If you came to Miami and asked Cubans who came here before Mariel, 99 percent of them would agree with me."
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Evidence of human smuggling from Cuba to Mexico is starting to pop up on the Yucatán Peninsula. In fact, Ybarra believes that the majority of Cubans are smuggled from the island in expensive speedboats rather than the type of ramshackle vessel that Harry crossed in.

"Cubans are the richest Hispanic group in the U.S.," Ybarra says. "We live in $1 million homes in Coral Gables. We have the money to pay for boats to get people out of Cuba."

According to Warr, smugglers charge $8,000 to $10,000 per person. The boats are often stolen from marinas along the Florida coast, Warr says, then used to transport 30 to 40 Cubans in a single trip.

In the Florida Straits, the Coast Guard has become more aggressive toward suspected smugglers. Officers are now instructed to shoot at boats that do not respond to warning shots. Gunfire has a 100 percent success rate, Warr says, and it's no surprise that smugglers have changed directions.

"We know it's happening, that there is a lot of maritime smuggling between Cuba and Mexico," Warr says. "We have a vested interest because, indirectly, that is illegal smuggling into the U.S."

The Coast Guard tries to patrol all international waters surrounding the Cuban, Mexican and U.S. coasts. If Cuban smuggling continues to affect the number of Cubans crossing the Texas border, Warr says that Coast Guard ships could patrol as far south as the Yucatán Channel.

"The Caribbean Sea is two million square miles and we try to patrol every bit of it," he says. "We realize we can't catch them all."

Officials from the Mexican state of Quintana Roo say that Cuban-Americans now have human smuggling rings based on the Yucatán Peninsula. Articles in Granma, the official newspaper in Cuba, which is widely perceived as a mouthpiece for the Cuban regime, have reported that Cubans are dressed up as tourists after arriving on the coast, and then hustled off to an airport in Cancún or Mérida.

Articles in the Mexican press have also speculated that competition for the lucrative trade of Cuban immigrants is responsible for a rash of gruesome homicides on the Yucatán. Quintana Roo Attorney General Bello Melchor Rodriguez contends that the violence is part of an ongoing battle over Cuban smuggling between Mexican drug cartels and a Cuban-American mafia.

The bloodshed started in July, when a Cuban-American man was killed in a shoot-out outside the National Immigration Institute in Mérida, the largest city in the Yucatán. Then, another Cuban, Luis Lázaro Lara Morejón, was found executed near Cancún, his body dumped on a remote and narrow strip of road.

Days after the Morejón murder, Mexican police followed red arrows painted on a Cancún highway and discovered three dead Mexicans, bound, gagged and blindfolded, partially buried in a sinkhole.

"We believe these people were executed by those who are part of a Cuban-­American mafia," Rodriguez told the Associated Press in August. "They probably hired people to execute them."

The Cuban government has blamed both Mexico and the United States for allowing the trafficking to occur, and calls the killings part of a "bloody war" between Cuban-Americans and the Mexican drug cartel, the Zetas.

Critics claim the Mexican government is taking few measures to prevent Cubans from entering the country. Harry found little more than indifference and neglect in Mexico after his group's initial rescue. At first, he was happy to land in Mexico. After ten days at sea, Harry's boat was found by Mexican fisherman, hundreds of miles from the intended destination. The fisherman alerted the Mexican Navy, which provided the group with food, water and medical attention, then took them to shore.

Harry was detained at an immigration office in Mérida. Mexican officials told his group that if they could pay a "fine" of $1,000, or arrange for a friend or relative to wire the money, they would be set free.

Harry and several others in the group were unable to pay and were taken to a prison in Tapachula, nearly 850 miles south of Cancún. Harry was told he would have to serve three months before being allowed to leave.

Hundreds of Cubans and thousands of Central Americans were detained at the prison. They slept on concrete floors, surviving on a steady diet of watered-down milk, rice and beans.

Harry says that from time to time, a small group of Cubans would be rounded up for deportation. According to the National Institute of Immigration in Mexico, authorities have detained 876 Cubans this year and deported 271.

The Mexican government has adopted a policy similar to the U.S. wet foot/dry foot rule. Still, all Cubans — even those found at sea — are detained for processing in Mexico. Furthermore, some Cubans seized on land are transported to an airport in Cancún and deported back to Cuba. Others, such as Harry, are found at sea but eventually released.

Harry says there seemed to be no logic to who was selected for return to Cuba, and he constantly felt that he might be next for deportation. But five months passed and Harry remained in Tapachula. When workers from Grupo Beta, a Mexican humanitarian organization, visited the prison, Harry decided to file a complaint with the group because he was languishing in the jail months after his anticipated release.

Harry was then taken before an immigration judge at the prison. The judge said that if Harry withdrew his complaint, he would be allowed to leave. Days later, after a hearty dinner and a night in a $10 hotel, Harry was on a bus rumbling north through Mexico.
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Marisela Campuzano devoted her life to ballet in Cuba. But when the Cuban government sent her to Venezuela on a "mission" to teach budding young ballerinas, Marisela used the opportunity to escape for the United States.

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