Cuban woman hopes son returns to island after attempting to flee to US

Irai Legra currently housed in Mexican church shelter

MATANZAS, Cuba – It's been three months since a Cuban woman from Matanzas last saw her son after he left the island with hopes of reaching the U.S.

She said he didn't expect the wet-foot, dry-foot policy to end.

Like Irai Legra, hundreds of Cubans remain in limbo on the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Irai left Dec. 17," Yusleivis Borges told Local 10 News reporter Hatzel Vela.

Legra used the same route that many other Cubans use to get to the U.S. First they go to Guyana, making their way through several south and Central American countries before finally reaching Mexico.

Former President Barack Obama ended the wet-foot, dry-foot policy on the day that Legra arrived in Mexico in January.

Borges said she never wanted her son to leave, but the 20-year-old wanted to go to the states for a better life and to reunite with his father.

Borges said there would be days during his voyage that she did not hear from him.

She feared for his safety and continues to worry about what will happen to her son.

She said he told her that he and several hundred other Cubans are staying in church shelters for the time being.

Borges told Vela that her son is a piece of her, and it's hard not knowing his future.

She said she wishes he would just return home.


About the Author

In January 2017, Hatzel Vela became the first local television journalist in the country to move to Cuba and cover the island from the inside. During his time living and working in Cuba, he covered some of the most significant stories in a post-Fidel Castro Cuba. 

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