With the pressure on Cuba’s dictatorship increasing and conditions in the country worsening, Cubans are fleeing in greater numbers. But the high security on America’s borders has forced them to seek shelter in other countries. Brazil is now home to what The Wall Street Journal’s Samantha Pearson calls the “New Miami.” She writes:

For decades, Cubans fleeing their homeland overwhelmingly headed north on rafts to Florida or flew to visa-friendly countries such as Nicaragua or Ecuador before making the long trek to the U.S.-Mexico border to cross into the U.S.

Now, Brazil has become one of the world’s top destinations for Cubans seeking refuge.

Brazil received a record 44,381 asylum applications from Cubans last year, more than any other country in Latin America and double from the previous year, according to CEDA, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks Cuban migration. More than 200,000 Cubans filed for asylum in the U.S. last year as Washington shut down other legal pathways into the country, but few were successful, according to CEDA.

For the first time, Cuban asylum applications in Brazil exceeded those from Venezuelans, another migrant community that has grown rapidly in this city of nearly two million people, long shaped by the fair-haired descendants of European immigrants.

It is a result of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that shut the southern border and made winning asylum cases much more difficult.

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