Cuban refugees are taking a cue from Mexico's illegal immigrants and crossing into the U.S. via the Lone Star State.
Roughly 7,000 Cubans are expected to cross the Hidalgo International Bridge within days. A Hidalgo cab driver with 40 years of experience told KRGV-5 Texas that refugees show up every day like clockwork.
"They get here every night, in the morning, and at night they get here. They go to Laredo, too," Jose Angel Rodriguez told the ABC affiliate on Monday.
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It did not take long for the station to find a Cuban refugee who was shuttling others into the country.
“In Cuba, there’s nothing. There’s no freedom. We came from Cuba because the pressure that we have there," Giovanni Acosta said Monday.
Acosta gave his interview next to 15-passenger vans with Florida license plates. He said he was waiting for his family and any other refugees he could assist.
"I did the same path, like all the Cubans did. I came from Ecuador. I walked for 27 days on the road. I can take whoever I want because they are Cuban," Acosta said.
KRGV-5 contacted U.S. Customs and Border Protection for its story and received the following response: "U.S. Customs and Border Protection is prepared to process the expected increase in Cubans applying for admission at South Texas ports of entry. CBP officers will process Cuban nationals in accordance with established procedures as expeditiously as possible while maintaining requirements and standards for individuals in our care."
Rep. Henry Cuellar, a South Texas Democrat, told the Los Angeles Times last November that 44,000 Cubans reached the southern U.S. border during the fiscal year that ended in September.
"The numbers have definitely increased pretty sharply in the past couple of years, especially since normalized relations have been announced. I don't know if we've hit the top of that," Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, told the newspaper Nov. 25, 2015.