Juan Mayedo crossed the Rio Grande with a group of 78 Cubans. On the morning of July 23, they turned themselves in to the Border Patrol in Eagle Pass, Texas, who concentrated them with another group of “some 300 migrants” from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Guatemala. He has been in Texas for more than a month and of the people with whom he went to the US he knows that only 42 “were given a Parole for being families.
Mayedo was granted a Notice to Appear (NTA). “I have to go to immigration court and a judge will decide” that he can stay in the US, he told 14ymedio. “In Mexico I did the procedures for refuge and the last appointment was for November, but without papers there is no work.”
Yenisleidy and her husband Maikel, along with their two children, made it to the US earlier this week. According to the lawyer and migrant defender José Luis Pérez Jiménez, this family of Cubans was granted “a Parole, the document that allows them to enter and then start an adjustment migration process.”
Pérez is aware that not all Cubans who travel as a family “are being granted a Parolethere are those who are given a Notice to Appear.” The litigant points out that there is no guarantee that “once they enter U.S. territory they will be granted asylum.” Among some of these cases is the Havana native Dayhana Varona, who is still waiting an answer.
“Cuba is experiencing an unprecedented migratory crisis, another Mariel, caused by a repressive regime, the economic crisis, the shortage that ranges from medicines to food. In Mexico this exodus is notorious,” said the lawyer.
Massive group of migrants walk alongside road and head towards border patrol to be apprehended. Another busy day ahead for BP agents and local authorities here in Eagle Pass. Migrants say they are coming from Cuba,Venezuela and Nicaragua @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/joXGxrr5VW
– Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) August 25, 2022
The arrival in groups of 150, 200 and 300 migrants has been referred to by Fox News journalist Bill Melugin, who this Thursday retweeted a video in which dozens of Cubans arrived at Eagles Pass to surrender to the Border Patrol.
Through Twitter, Melugin has shared moments in which groups of 300 migrants surrender to the Texas authorities in search of asylum. On August 15, she witnessed the arrival of 75 Cubans and Venezuelanssome children among them, and their transfer in trucks.
So far in fiscal year 2022, which began in October, the Border Patrol has detained 175,147 Cubans. In July, 20,099 arrests were recorded. The peaks of this migratory bleeding occurred in the months of March and April, when 66,991 nationals arrived in the United States.
The figure of 175,147 Cubans is already historic, surpassing the Mariel exodus, when approximately 125,000 Cubans emigrated in 1980, and the rafters’ crisis, between August and September 1994, when almost 31,000 migrants arrived in Florida.
On the Island, everyone who has managed to raise money to leave by selling their properties or has obtained financial support from an emigrated relative has not thought twice about “going to visit the volcanoes,” laughs Yankiel, a young man barely 25 years that he was dedicated to the barbershop in Santiago de Cuba.
His sister has lived in Mexico for more than three years and “got together to get me out of this hell,” he explains, referring to how difficult it has become to live in Cuba due to inflation and scarcity. Taking advantage of the fact that tickets have gone down, the young man’s sister bought him a ticket for next week at a Miami agency that sells charter flights between Cuba and Nicaragua.
In his case, he will fly from Santiago de Cuba itself with Air Century, and will make two stops, one in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) and another in Kingston (Jamaica) before arriving in Managua, Yankiel details. The ticket had a cost of 3,900 dollars but between April and June they cost 5,500, recalls the man from Santiago.
Better luck with the price ran Amaury, who got a ticket to Nicaragua for $3,700 with the family of some friends in Miami. The trip was also by Air Century departing from Santiago de Cuba, his hometown, but he only made a technical stopover in Kingston for an hour and a half and continued to Managua, where he arrived this Friday morning.
Amaury is currently on his way to the border with Honduras. He decided to go on his own to Guatemala and from there pay a coyote to the southern border of the United States. “This way I save a little more for the passage through Mexico,” he assures 14ymedio. “That is the route that worries me the most because they have deported several Cubans, even walking with coyotes and even with documents, and I do not want to return to Cuba. I will pay whatever it takes to be allowed to continue.”
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