The biggest wave of Cuban migrants arriving in US since 1980 is driving policy changes

About 115,000 Cubans — more than one percent of the island’s population — have left their homeland fleeing poverty and repression and reached the U.S. in the past seven months, a mass migration wave on a scale not seen in four decades that has prompted recent changes in U.S. policy and provided the Cuban government an escape valve following unprecedented protests last year. Between October of last year and April, immigration authorities detained 114,916 Cubans, the vast majority at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the most recent data published by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Cubans...