US-bound Cubans used to encounter far fewer obstacles on the migration passage, but that’s changed due to crackdowns

Yatsel Jerez Ramón has been in Mexico for six weeks, and so far, nothing has gone well for the Cuban migrant trying to reach the United States.

On his first night in Tenosique, a small city in the southern border state of Tabasco, Jerez, 37, narrowly escaped a police raid at his hotel. The following day, a man posing as a state lawyer convinced him to handover $500 to obtain a humanitarian visa with which, Jerez was told, he’d be able to safely continue his passage north.