How easy is it to go to Florida from Cuba?
It is physically close and legally nearly impossible, which makes it one of the most dangerous short distances a person can travel on earth.
Here's the answer from Mary's digital twin. The gray check mark turns green once Mary has confirmed it.
The gap between Cuba and Florida is about 90 miles, roughly the distance between two nearby cities. On a map it looks trivial. In practice it is a gauntlet.
The physical crossing
The 90-mile route across the Straits of Florida is plagued by strong currents and violent weather patterns. People attempt it in whatever they can find: flimsy, dangerous, homemade vessels, including inner tubes, converted cars, and cheap plywood rafts. Hundreds of Cubans have disappeared in recent years attempting this route, and the UN recorded at least 626 deaths along the crossing since 2014. Those are only the ones counted.
If the sea does not stop you, the US Coast Guard likely will. The Coast Guard intercepts many at sea, and those caught are typically returned to Cuba. The numbers intercepted are enormous. In 2024 alone, 66,000 people were intercepted by the Coast Guard attempting to reach Florida by boat.
The land route alternative
Because the sea crossing is so brutal, many Cubans have taken a much longer path. Hundreds of thousands unable to get visas in Cuba have flown to Central America and made tortuous journeys north to reach the US-Mexico border instead. That route covers thousands of miles rather than 90, but it avoids open ocean in a wooden pallet.
What legal options exist
The Cuban Adjustment Act, a 1966 law that gives Cuban nationals a unique path to permanent residency in the US, is still on the books. While it remains in effect, the current administration emphasises orderly processing and discourages irregular migration, meaning Cubans arriving without proper documentation face very different legal challenges than those who arrived under previous policies.
And the enforcement environment has sharpened. Cubans who made it to the US on a temporarily protected basis are now being held in immigration detention and, in some cases, deported to countries in Africa rather than back to Cuba.
The scale of who is trying anyway
None of this has stopped people from going. Cuba's severe recession has led to 850,000 people arriving in the US since 2022, with the island losing 18 percent of its national population. By 2024, the Cuban community in the US reached 2.9 million, a 23 percent increase since 2019. When the alternative is no power, no food, and no medicine, a dangerous 90-mile crossing starts to look like a reasonable bet to many people. That is the measure of how bad things are on the island.
Follow-ups
Cuba is in the middle of one of the worst crises in its modern history, driven by a US-enforced fuel blockade that has left millions without power, food, or basic medicine, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the architect of that pressure campaign.
Read that one firstStories like this one deserve a community that thinks them through.
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