MIAMI — Yarileisy Sierra was waiting for her younger brother to arrive with hundreds of other Cuban migrants Thursday evening at the Border Patrol Station in Dania Beach.
The 40-year-old Miami-Dade resident, bringing festive balloons, told the Miami Herald that she only wants one thing: to take her brother home after he survived a perilous journey from Mariel, Cuba, to the Florida Keys.
“I want to bring him home, and treat him the way he deserves,” she said.
Thanks to an Instagram photo, Sierra added, she first learned that her brother, Rolando Corbacho Pérez, 26, had emigrated and arrived in the Keys.
“That’s my brother!” Sierra said when she saw the photo online. He was sitting in a small boat called “Dios con nosotros” or “God with us” next to 12 other Cubans.
Corbacho Pérez is one of hundreds of Cuban migrants that have flooded into the Florida Keys in the last few weeks seeking asylum. They crossed the narrow 90-mile channel in rickety makeshift boats, and some carried compasses around their necks to guide them.
The Keys, and South Florida, have seen a jump in migrant arrivals in recent years, but incidents have spiked in the last few months. Since October, the U.S. Coast Guard has stopped more than 4,000 Cubans at sea. Since Christmas alone, almost 500 Cubans and 130 Haitians have arrived to South Florida via boat.
Nearly 500 Cubans ended up in the Dry Tortugas, a remote island national park at the tip of the Florida Keys. There were so many people on the island, awaiting a ride from the U.S. Border Patrol back to the mainland, that authorities closed the park.
On Thursday, seven charter buses ensconced in a police escort ferried 327 of the migrants from Key West to Border Patrol processing stations, likely those in Dania Beach and West Palm Beach, sources told the Herald.
There, migrants will be processed for removal from the country. For the past year, that process has evolved into a sort of parole process, where migrants are ordered to check in with immigration officials on a regular schedule and are typically released to friends and family.
The buses, along with the police escort, arrived at the Broward County facility just before 7 p.m. Thursday.
About a dozen family members, like Sierra, waited outside the facility Thursday evening — hoping to be reunited with their loved ones and take them home.
This is the third time that Corbacho Pérez has tried to emigrate to Florida, Sierra said. The first two times he was caught by Cuban authorities and returned home.
“I’ll be happy when I have my brother by my side,” she said.
Yayli Trujillo, 39, said her cousin came in the same boat as Corbacho Pérez. They left Mariel Dec. 30, and she noted they arrived in the Florida Keys nearly 24 hours later on New Year’s Eve.
”I came to pick him up and take him home,” Trujillo said in Spanish.
Similar to Corbacho Pérez, Trujillo said she learned that her cousin had arrived in the Keys after seeing him in a photo posted on Facebook.
“I started shaking,” she detailed.
Trujillo said that she has been a nervous wreck during the last few days.
“Now that he is OK, I feel better,” she said. “It has been many days of anguish.”
When asked what she will do if she is not allowed to take her cousin home Thursday night, she stated she will keep coming until federal authorities free him.
“We will come again tomorrow, and we will keep coming until we can take them home,” she said.
Yanet González Díaz, 43, was waiting to see if two of her three sons were among the group of migrants being transported to the detention center.
“Some people say they saw them in the Keys, but we don’t know what to believe,” González Díaz said. “We only believe in God.”
González Díaz said she trusts that her sons Marco Antonio Rodríguez González, 16, and Luis Andrés Rodríguez González, 20, are alive. She also said that, other than the economic and political conditions on the island, they also came because they miss their mom.
“My heart tells me that they are OK, and that they are here,” she said.
Around 8 p.m., six buses pulled out of the Dania Beach center. Two were still packed with what appeared to be migrants, and four were empty.
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(Miami Herald staff writer David Goodhue contributed to this story.)
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