Cubans go to Mexico to dodge U.S. sea patrols

But the Mexican route is also becoming increasingly prone to violence.

In June, gunmen snatched 33 Cubans off a government bus taking them to an immigration station in southern Mexico, possibly to extort money from them or their smugglers. Many of those migrants later turned up in the U.S., and all detained Cuban migrants now have armed police escorts.

In August, as the navy gave chase, smugglers set fire to their boat just off the beach in Cancun, creating a diversion that allowed them to swim ashore and escape. The migrants jumped into the sea and either swam to safety or were rescued by beach-goers on water scooters.

"These are pretty ruthless organizations that are focused on making money," said Lt. Matthew J. Moorlag, a spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard's 7th District, which cooperates with Mexico but doesn't patrol in Mexican waters. "We've seen people get thrown overboard and forced to swim to shore."

Several Cuban-Americans believed to be involved in trafficking have been killed in recent years in or around Cancun. And once inside Mexico, the migrants often find themselves at the mercy of Mexico's feared drug cartels who have diversified into people-smuggling.

U.S. federal prosecutors in Miami have charged many alleged smugglers of Cubans recently, including 39 Cuban-Americans named in 18 separate indictments in the last month alone.

Targeting large boats
The smuggling has spawned new trends in Florida: Now that owners in Miami and the Keys are using tracking devices, chains and motion detectors, boat thefts are shifting up the coast, said Ricky Linale, Miami-area agent of King's Bay Insurance.

And thieves may now be targeting larger boats: Some smugglers now pack a cabin cruiser with people, wait at sea and smuggle a few at a time to Mexico on faster boats, said David Spahl, an organized-crime investigator with the Collier County Sheriff's office on Florida's west coast.

And some boat owners "lend" their craft to smugglers and then falsely report them stolen for the insurance money, Linale said.

Vice Admiral Carlos Angulo of the Mexican navy says the smugglers' boats "are mainly stolen in Florida," and Cuban-Americans clearly run the business. The six smugglers his sailors caught this year "call themselves Cuban-Americans, and they carry their U.S. residency papers."

Last year, Angulo's navy detachment seized 26 makeshift craft with Cubans aboard and only five modern boats, but so far this year, his sailors have seized 32 modern, multiengine vessels, and only six homemade ones.

Mexico has long tolerated the escape route, and seldom returns escapees to Cuba, but its people are tiring of the exceptional treatment the U.S. gives Cubans, as well as the corruption and violence spawned by people-smuggling.

"It is all handled by a gang," said Jose Sanchez, 42, an Isla Mujeres fisherman. "They bring them here, they give them new clothes to make them look like an average citizen ... and they take them to Cancun" where almost all are given a 30-day transit visa to the U.S. border.

Mendez, the radio host, is still outraged by what the smugglers are doing.

"I'm a Cuban-American, my parents are Cuban and I understand what those people are going through in communist Cuba," he said.

But, "Now it's no longer, ... 'I really want to go help my family members.' Now it's, 'I want to go make money off these poor innocent people and if I'm going to get caught, what I'm going to do is dump all of them in the water and get off scot-free.'"

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