Cubans In Limbo Hope Trump Will Help
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — She spent weeks hiking through the Amazon, crossing a crocodile-filled river. She escaped from immigration detention in Panama and slept in a church. Broke, hungry and exhausted, she found refuge with indigenous people in the jungle who fed her.
Six months after f leeing Cuba on a journey to the United States, Marleni Barbier, a dental assistant, made it to the border with Texas — about 12 hours too late. More than 1,000 Cuban migrants who endured monthslong treks across as many as 10 countries to reach the United States have become marooned in Mexico, halted by the Obama administration’s decision to end special immigration privileges for Cubans.
In the last year, Cubans fled their country by the tens of thousands to take advantage of a policy that permitted them to enter the United States. Now, the Cubans stranded in Mexico — and potentially thousands more traveling through the Americas — hope for a reprieve from President Donald J. Trump. He was elected on a promise to build a wall along the border, but the migrants hope he will let them through.
“I have faith that Trump will change it,” said Ms. Barbier, 44. “To take away a law at the last minute like that, it’s so unjust.”
Some migrants had arrived on January 12, the day the United States ended the so- called wet foot, dry foot rule dating to 1995, which sent back Cubans caught at sea but allowed those who reached land to enter.
About 150 Cubans had come within 50 steps of the pedestrian bridge that connects Nuevo Laredo, in Mexico, to Laredo, Texas. They are being fed by Mexican strangers.
The Cuban government has long said the policy bleeds the island of its citizens and lures migrants into perilous trips by land and sea. Former President Barack Obama said the policy was “designed for a different era” before the restoration of diplomatic ties with Cuba. He said the United States would now treat Cuban migrants “the same way we treat migrants from other countries.”
Mr. Trump campaigned on an anti- immigration platform, vowing not to let migrants slip through American borders. But he has also threatened to overturn Mr. Obama’s executive orders and get tough on the Cuban government.
Mr. Trump has said the wet foot, dry foot policy was unfair. Still, the Cubans here hope he will show compassion for people who undertook arduous voyages to escape Communism and extreme poverty.
Ms. Barbier said she had spent all of the $8,000 she made from the sale of her house in Cuba for the journey. “That money is gone, gone, gone,” she said.
About 41,000 Cubans made similar trips across the Americas last year, with more than 11,000 Cubans arriving in Mexico in the last three months of 2016. But now these migrants may be sent back unless they can prove they endured persecution, not just poverty or lack of opportunity, on the island.
Alberto Ramírez Balmaseda said he had turned back because border agents told him he would face long periods of incarceration for a chance at presenting proof of persecution.
“What evidence do we have? That there’s been a Castro regime in power for about 60 years?” Mr. Ramírez said. “If you are a political prisoner in Cuba, they don’t put ‘political prisoner’ on your criminal record. They say you stole a pig.”
Yenier Echevarría González, 31, a baker, said state security agents had seen a photo he posted from Brazil on Facebook. They showed up at his house in Cuba and demanded that his wife sign his employment resignation papers.
“First of all, if I’m deported, I will probably have to serve two months in jail,” he said. “And I will never again have a job, a car or a house — ever.”
José Martín Carmona Flores, who runs a state agency in Mexico that offers humanitarian assistance to migrants, said he is worried about the thousands of people who could still flood Mexico. His agency was created after 78 migrants were massacred in his state by a drug cartel in 2010.
“I think they are going to have to reach some kind of amnesty or truce and be returned to their country; Mexico will have to do it, because they are here,” Mr. Carmona said. “Who is going to be the executioner? Who is going to return these people to a place where they are likely to be ‘sanctioned’ — to put a friendly word to it?”