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The Federal Highway Police of Brazil arrested a driver who fled while transporting nine undocumented Cuban migrants packed into the vehicle, on a road in the state of Roraima, last Thursday.
The 29-year-old driver was detained for promoting illegal immigration, reported news outlets. He and the nine passengers were traveling in a car with a capacity for only five people when they were intercepted by agents on the BR-401 highway in the municipality of Cantá, in the northern part of Roraima.
The car was heading from Bonfim to Boa Vista, a common route for migrants crossing from Guyana, when the driver spotted the police patrol and attempted to escape at high speed along a dirt road. The officers caught up with him shortly after.
The detainee has a history of theft and a prison record for mercury smuggling. He was transferred along with the nine Cubans to the Federal Police delegation. The migrants lacked legal entry records to the country.
This operation is the most recent in a series of interventions that have intensified in Roraima throughout May. In just this month, more than 70 migrants have been rescued in various incidents on the roads of that northern state, according to reports from the Brazilian press, although the actual number of cases may exceed this figure. The police have arrested several suspected human traffickers.
Last Tuesday, seven Cubans were intercepted while crossing the Tacutu River illegally in Bonfim, having each paid approximately $1,000 to smugglers. Just four days earlier, the police had rescued 21 migrants —18 Cubans, two Chinese, and one Haitian— from three vehicles in Boa Vista and arrested two Brazilian traffickers.
On May 16, 10 Cubans—including two children aged two and four—were crammed into a car without back seats traveling along the BR-401 in the municipality of Cantá when the police stopped the vehicle. On May 12, 31 Cubans—among them five minors—were intercepted in Bonfim after crossing the Tacutu River in canoes from Guyana.
The phenomenon is part of an unprecedented Cuban exodus to Brazil. The asylum requests from Cubans in the country surged by 88% in one year, rising from 22,300 in 2024 to over 41,900 in 2025, making Cubans the largest nationality applying for refuge, surpassing Venezuelans. Brazil currently hosts around 84,000 Cubans, according to the Ministry of Justice.
The most commonly used route starts from Havana by plane to Georgetown, the capital of Guyana— the only country in the region that does not require a visa for Cuban citizens— then continues by land to the border with Brazil and crosses the Tacutu River into Roraima. This route became particularly established starting in 2025, when the Trump administration closed nearly all legal entry pathways to the United States for Cubans.
The economic and social collapse in Cuba—chronic power outages, shortages of food and medicine, rampant inflation, and political repression—continues to be the main driving force behind this growing exodus each month towards Brazil. Between 2024 and May 2026, the Federal Highway Police in Roraima rescued 189 migrants on federal highways, arrested 31 traffickers, and confiscated 31 vehicles; about 91% of the migrants were Cuban.
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