HIALEAH, Fla.—Ferrying Cubans to the U.S. in the past year has become a billion-dollar business involving airlines, charter operators and travel agents working from strip malls in Florida to airports across Central America and the Caribbean.
Immigration figures show a quarter of a million Cubans have arrived in the U.S. in the past year. Many of them paid thousands of dollars each to get away from the communist island and its crumbling economy, flying to Nicaragua and then paying coyotes, or migrant smugglers, to guide them across Mexico to the U.S. border.
A handful of airline companies have carried tens of thousands of Cubans from a half dozen Cuban cities to the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, with each paying up to $4,000 or more for the ticket, according to flight records and travel industry representatives.
Cuban stand-up comedian
Cristhian González
flew from Havana to Managua in October after a close relative sold his car in Miami and bought him a round-trip airline ticket for $3,600.
After landing in Nicaragua, Mr. González received another $4,000 from his relative to pay for a smuggler who helped him and two dozen other Cubans make their way up through Central America and Mexico in a grueling, monthslong road journey to the U.S.
Cristhian González flew from Havana to Managua, Nicaragua, in October.
Photo:
Cristhian Gonzalez
“It’s a mass escape,” says the 22-year-old Mr. González. “Every day I get news through Facebook or Instagram of another friend who is leaving Cuba.”
In the 12 months through October, around 244,000 Cubans were apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol after fleeing economic misery and political repression at home. Most of them came via this expensive airlift through Nicaragua, and were released into the U.S., according to U.S. officials.
It is the largest number of Cubans to arrive in the U.S. in a single wave since the late
Fidel Castro
came to power in 1959, twice the 125,000 who came in the Mariel boatlift of 1980 and almost six times as many…
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