Cuban migrants to fly out of Costa Rica next week

In this Nov. 21, 2015 file photo, a Cuban woman migrant uses her cell phone while other Cubans sleep, outside of the border control building in Penas Blancas, Costa Rica, on the border with Nicaragua which closed its borders to Cuban migrants. The Costa Rican Foreign Ministry said in a Dec. 28 statement that the first humanitarian transfer will airlift the Cuban migrants from that country to El Salvador in January. From there they will continue by bus toward Mexico. The number of Cubans stranded in Costa Rica has reached at least 8,000 since neighboring Nicaragua closed its border to them weeks ago. AP File Photo

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica—A first group of 180 Cuban migrants stranded in Costa Rica is to fly out of the country next Tuesday to continue their journey through Central America and Mexico to new lives in the US, officials said.

If the trip is deemed a success, most if not all the 7,800 Cubans stuck in Costa Rica will be following, under an agreement struck last week between several Central American nations.

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Costa Rican Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez told a news conference on Wednesday that “the beginning of the pilot plan will take place on January 12” with a second flight planned for a week later.

Costa Rica, in coordination with the International Organization for Migration, scrambled during the height of Central America’s tourist high season to find a charter flight able to take the migrants.

The need to use a plane resulted from neighboring Nicaragua’s decision mid-November to close its border to all US-bound Cubans. Managua is an ally to Havana’s government.

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Gonzalez said the 180 Cubans will fly out of the northern city of Liberia, close to the Nicaraguan border, to El Salvador, where they will take buses to cross through to Guatemala to the Mexican border.

The selected Cubans are to pay the $535 cost of the air-and-land journey themselves, and will have to find their own way across Mexico to the US border.

America has a policy dating back to the Cold War to accept any Cuban who sets foot on its soil. The number of migrants attempting the trip jumped last year, in the wake of a December 2014 thaw announced by Havana and Washington.

Stuck with the problem of a growing number of Cubans, Costa Rica on December 19 stopped giving any more arrivals visas and threatened to deport illegal migrants back to Cuba.

As a result, nearly 1,000 more Cuban migrants are stranded in Panama, unable to cross north over the border into Costa Rica.