A Cuban migrant who was detained by immigration police receives food at the immigration office in San Jose.

AFP
San Jose

About 1,000 desperate Cubans on an exhausting odyssey through South and Central America to the US are stuck in Costa Rica with many risking deportation, authorities and the migrants said.
Many of them are too broke to pay further passage north, having exhausted their funds by flying from Cuba to Ecuador then travelling overland through Colombia, then paying bribes to go by small boats to Panama and then over the land border into Costa Rica.
More than 100 of them are staying in streets close to Costa Rica’s migration office in the capital San Jose, and nearly 1,000 are stuck in a border town unable to pass through passport control because they don’t have a visa.
America has a longstanding policy of accepting Cubans who set foot on its soil.
In an effort to get past the US Coast Guard, which would return them to Cuba if caught on water, many now try to enter via Central America and then Mexico - the same route used by mainland Latino migrants.
But increased security along the southern US border and boosted vigilance in Mexico have made that passage more difficult.
Images by Costa Rican television news channel Telenoticias showed the Cubans in the southern Costa Rican border town of Paso Canoas demonstrating to ask they be permitted to continue their journey.
“We are chasing our dreams,” read one placard held by a Cuban.
Another, Rosalis Taguada, told the channel that “we have risked our lives to make it to Costa Rica - it’s difficult for a mother to subject her daughter to this, but it is more difficult to remain in that country (Cuba).”
The head of Costa Rica’s migration service, Kathya Rodriguez, told reporters that the Cubans already in San Jose could soon be taken north, to the border with Nicaragua, if their papers were in order.