Booming Migrant Charter Flights To Nicaragua Prompt US Crackdown

Havana, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2023) Cuban and Haitian migrants are increasingly taking chartered flights to Nicaragua from where they seek to travel overland to the United States, prompting Washington to impose sanctions this week on the operators of the aircraft.

Irma Perez, a 28-year-old Cuban, told AFP she arrived in the Nicaraguan capital Managua last month aboard a charter flight run by Mexican aviation firm Viva Aerobus.

"We had a 45-minute layover in Cancun (Mexico) without disembarking, and then came to Managua," she said.

Perez was speaking from Mexico, after she, her husband and one-year-old son traveled there overland with the help of a people-smuggler.

The family plans to head towards the United States.

Several Cuban migrants told AFP they had traveled with the same company on flights chartered by small travel agencies.

Viva Aerobus, which does not advertise fights between Cuba and Nicaragua on its website, did not respond to AFP's requests for comment.

Perez said she and her husband paid $1,250 each for their tickets, and $350 for that of her son. The people-smuggler cost them another $2,100.