MIAMI — Cuba’s coastal cities of Matanzas and Cienfuegos each have around 177,000 residents.
That is also the astonishing number of Cubans that U.S. immigration authorities have stopped at the country’s borders from last October to June, an exodus already the size of a major Cuban city that is not showing signs of abating.
A majority of the 177,848 recorded encounters with Cubans at the borders nationwide in that period happened at the southern border with Mexico. But Cubans who had no money or help from relatives to afford land trips that sometimes cross through half the continent are taking an even more risky route by sea.
