2 sisters' 4,200-mile journey to the US
The Rolo González sisters walked out of Nicaragua's main airport and peered out onto a sea of young men.
The Central American “coyotes” squinted back, trying to find the people they would smuggle to the United States. These were the first steps that 19-year-old Merlyn and 24-year-old Melanie took outside of Cuba. Toting two small backpacks and Melanie's 1-year-old daughter, the women realized just how alone they were.
Their odyssey of more than 4,200 miles (6,000 kilometers) would lead the medical students to question their past lives, race unknowingly against a ticking legal clock and leave them teetering on the edge of death as they tumbled down a cliff.
This is part of an occasional series on how the United States became the world's top destination for asylum-seekers.
The sisters' voyage is one that hundreds of thousands of Cubans have made over the last two years in a historic wave of migration, fueled by a crisis in the island's already-troubled economy sparked in large part by the pandemic and one of the world's highest rates of inflation.
The exodus prompted a January Biden administration measure to cut back on Cuban migrants, whom the U.S. had historically welcomed even as it turned away Haitians, Venezuelans, Mexicans and people from other Latin American and Caribbean nations.
The Rolo González sisters, like other Cuban migrants, lost hope for the future in their country. Their optimism rested in the hazy prospect of life in the U.S. and a brighter future for the little girl who would have no memories of the island.
“All you know is that you're going to a foreign country where you've never been, to put your life in the hands of people you've never met, to another place you don't know,” said the younger sister. “You have your destination, but you don't know what awaits you on your journey.”
Over the past two years, American authorities have detained Cubans nearly 300,000 times on the border with Mexico. Some have been sent back but the vast majority have stayed under immigration rules dating to the Cold War. That's more than half the population of Baltimore, or nearly 3% of the people in Cuba.
While they had trained as doctors, the Rolo González sisters spent their free time on the outskirts of Havana scraping together enough to buy basics like baby formula for Melanie's daughter.
The women once dreamed of traveling as doctors but they quickly grew disillusioned about life in Cuba due to frequent blackouts, medical supply shortages and other restrictions.
When Melanie's daughter, Madisson, was born, she and her economist husband began to discuss their family migrating to the U.S. He would go first, they decided, and then they would seek to migrate through legal, less dangerous routes.
In May 2022, he flew to Nicaragua. Shortly after, Melanie said, he left her for another woman.
She still planned to migrate, though, now with her little sister.
The vast majority of Cuban migrants over the last year have flown to Nicaragua — where Cubans don't need a visa — and head overland to Mexico. A growing number also take a dangerous route by sea, traveling on packed, precariously constructed boats almost 100 miles (161 kilometers) to Florida.
The sisters sold a house left to them by their father, along with the refrigerator, television and anything else of value in exchange for American dollars. With money from friends and family in Florida, they had $20,000.
It bought the Rolo González sisters flights to Nicaragua and passage overland to the U.S. border with one of the smuggling networks.