Washington, DC, November 11, 2025 --  

An abrupt end of Cuban migration to America promises misery for those on and off the island.

Cuba's largest ever wave of migration to America has come to an abrupt halt. From October 2021 through January of this year, about 700,000 Cubans arrived in America. Border guards encountered over 6,000 Cuban migrants every single month over this period -- peak ing at 44,000 in December 2023.¹ But everything changed after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. A combination of harsh rhetoric and more aggressive tactics at the border led monthly migrant encounters by border guards to plummet to fewer than 200 starting in February.²

This has had huge impacts across Latin America. In Panama's Darien Gap, which had become a major land gateway for migrants bound for North America, traffic fell to nearly zero over the summer³ and migrant hostels in the southernmost Mexican border town of Tapachula are empty.

Even the Cuban migrants lucky enough to have made it to America before the border closure have been hit hard. In March, the Trump administration rescinded the parole and temporary work authorization for all Cuban arrivals for the prior year, making them illegal workers overnight and setting them on a clock to become illegal immigrants by the end of April should they fail to leave the country.⁴

This executive order effectively ended Cubans' historically privileged immigration status -- a status that for decades granted almost all Cuban migrants humanitarian "parole" allowing them to immediately stay and work in the United States. The Supreme Court upheld the mass revocation of parole in May.⁵

If official statistics are correct, few Cubans are trying to come to America anymore. Of those turned back or still on the way when the border locked down, some headed to Mexico City or Monterrey to look for work.⁶ Other Cubans have been heading to Brazil, where a community has formed in the southern city of Curitiba.⁷ For those unwilling to wait out the change in America's immigration policy, Brazil and Mexico appear to be the new destinations of choice.

But the money to be made working in those countries is a small fraction of what can be made in America. And given that the United States has long been the overwhelming destination of choice for Cuban emigrants, it will be a tough transition for a community that has become used to relying on family connections for those already in Miami, Houston, or other parts of America.

That's bad news for both Cuban migrants and those remaining on the island. The bulk of Cuban migrants are of working age, and send money back as remittances to help their families survive the deplorable conditions in the impoverished communist state. Remittances to Cuba were estimated at $2.5 billion in 2023, a major source of hard currency for the regime.⁸

Before the Cuban exodus abruptly ended in February, some estimate that as many as two million Cubans had left the country in the exodus -- over 10 percent of the country's population. This exodus reduced pressure on Cuba's communist regime by giving it fewer mouths to feed and offering the hope of more remittances to keep the island going. Although the loss of working age Cubans clearly has a negative impact on Cuba's economy.

For Cubans already in America, it has or will become abundantly clear that they have been betrayed by the Trump Administration. Miami-Dade county, America's largest Cuban majority area, shifted from marginal Trump support in 2016 to overwhelming support in 2024. Now the Trump administration has had a love fest in the White House with the self-described "Democratic Socialist" mayor of New York, and is working to mass deport Cuban refugees back to a repressive communist state.

It may be impossible for Trump to win back the votes of America's Cuban community, something that is especially problematic for Trump's Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American and past presidential hopeful. But the one black swan event that could change this is the fall of the Cuban regime, possibly exacerbated by the loss of free Venezuelan oil should that regime fall under pressure from Amerca's offshore military buildup.

But given that Trump tried and failed to topple the Venezuelan regime during his first term, don't bet on a Venezuela-Cuba domino effect regime change happening soon. For Cubans suffering from repression and poverty on the communist island, the next three years can't end soon enough.

Related Web Columns:

What's Love Got to Do With It? October 29, 2024

Here to Stay, December 13, 2022

Cuba's White Flight, August 23, 2022

Notes:

1. US Customs and Border Protection, Nationwide Encounters, as posted November 23, 2025

2. Ibid.

3. Axios, Migrant Traffic Through the Darién Gap Falls to Near Zero, July 30, 2025

4. El Pais, Thousands of Parole Beneficiaries Receive a Government Email: 'You Should Depart the United States Now', March 31, 2025

5. New York Times, Move to Canada? Migrants Face 'No Good Options' After Supreme Court Ruling, May 31, 2025

6. Fox News, Cuban-Led Caravan Aims for Mexico City as Trump Policies Deter Migrants from US, October 7, 2025

7. Guardian, ‘Our North is the South’: Softball Leagues Flourish in Brazilian City as Cuban Arrivals Outnumber Venezuelans for First Time, August 2, 2025

8. Inter-American Dialog, Remittances to Cuba and the Marketplace in 2024, March 2024