Cubans Spend Thousands to Flee to the U.S. Through Nicaragua

HIALEAH, Fla.—Bringing Cubans to the United States over the past year has become a multi-billion dollar business involving airlines, rental operators, and travel agents working from the hubs. shopping in Florida to airports across Central America and the Caribbean.

Immigration figures show that a quarter of a million Cubans have come to the United States in the past year. Many of them paid thousands of dollars each to leave the communist island and its crumbling economy, fly to Nicaragua and then pay coyotes, or migrant smugglers , to guide them across Mexico to the US border.