Cuban Detour to Texas

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. Reinier 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 10 days at sea, Reinier's boat was found by a 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.

Reinier 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.

Reinier and several others in the group were unable to pay and were taken to a prison in Tapachula, nearly 850 miles south of Cancún. Reinier 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.

Reinier 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 Reinier, are found at sea but eventually released.

Reinier 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 Reinier remained in Tapachula. When workers from Grupo Beta, a Mexican humanitarian organization, visited the prison, Reinier decided to file a complaint with the group because he was languishing in the jail months after his anticipated release.

Reinier was then taken before an immigration judge at the prison. The judge said that if Reinier withdrew his complaint, he would be allowed to leave. Days later, after a hearty dinner and a night in a $10 hotel, Reinier was on a bus rumbling north through Mexico.

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, Campuzano used the opportunity to escape for the United States.

Campuzano and her husband bought fake passports and attempted to fly out of the country. But Venezuelan immigration officials busted them and confiscated the passports. Then Campuzano tried paying a man who said he had a contact in the U.S. Embassy and could provide a visa for the right price. That plan failed as well.

After losing money a second time, the couple remained in Venezuela until they managed to obtain a legal visa to visit Mexico. After eight years, the couple, along with their young son, took a flight to Reynosa, a border town across from McAllen, and entered the United States.

That was in 2000, when the trend of Cubans crossing the Texas border was about as unique as Mexicans floating to Miami. Customs officials were not versed in Cuban policy, Campuzano says, and her family was told to return to Mexico.

"We would rather go to jail than go back," Campuzano says, "so we made up a story."

Campuzano and her husband told customs officers that they had taken a boat from Cuba to Mexico, and that they had paid smugglers to transport them to the U.S. border. Campuzano pleaded that she could not return to Mexico because she feared for her life.

Customs officials took Campuzano and her husband to a detention facility where they waited for an immigration hearing. After 10 days, they were released, and Campuzano's aunt and uncle brought the family to Houston.

Before 2005, all Cubans were held at detention facilities for weeks at a time until they could be processed, according to Felix Garza, an agent with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. But as spots at the detention facilities started to fill up, and the trickle of Cubans along the border turned into a tide, the Department of Homeland Security changed the policy to allow for almost immediate parole.

Still, some Cubans are detained.

"Once we begin the processing, we do have the authority to make an arrest," says Garza, who oversees border crossings from Del Rio to Brownsville. Garza says that a Cuban could be detained if he is determined to be sick or mentally ill or to have a criminal record.

"The policy on that kind of shifts from day to day," says Jodie Goodwin, an attorney in Harlingen. Goodwin has practiced immigration law along the Texas border for more than a decade and has seen the Cuban boom firsthand. She has represented a number of Cubans detained at the Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos.