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Cuban migration risk index rose to 0.77 in October, an extreme level, elTOQUE reports
The Cuban Migration Risk Index recorded 16 events and 112 people involved in October, against 14 events and 40 people in September, when the index stood at 0.69. Four people died and three were still missing at the end of the month.
elTOQUE's Cuban Migration Risk Index (IRMC) stood at 0.77 in October, the band the outlet classifies as extreme, against 0.69 in September, which was the high band. The number of events rose from 14 to 16 and the number of people involved from 40 to 112, 180% more.
Among the month's cases is that of Fermín Izquierdo, who had been adrift for eight or nine days without fuel, water or food when a cargo ship picked him up on 19 October some 352 kilometres north-east of Progreso, in Yucatán. He had left Mantua, in Pinar del Río, with five other people. According to accounts that the Mexican authorities have not corroborated, two died on board and three disappeared at sea while trying to reach the ship.
On 21 October a plane left Alexandria, Louisiana, for the Central African Republic with about 90 migrants. Of those, 69 were Cuban, according to the deportees, who said they had spent some 50 hours handcuffed and shackled.
Four migrants died in October: two on the boat from Mantua, one who drowned on 18 October at Puerto Madero, Chiapas, while awaiting a decision on his asylum claim, and Lázaro Yasmany Izquierdo Duarte, 37, who died on 21 October in Little Diamond, Guyana, after being stabbed the previous day. Three people from the Mantua group were still missing at the end of the month; four men reported missing after leaving Consolación del Sur, by contrast, were found alive in Mexico.
The United States accounted for 8 events and 76 people, including cases at sea handled by its authorities; next came Mexico, with 6 events and 32 people, the Bahamas, with 1 and 3, and Guyana, with 1 and 1. Among those for whom data were available, 87 were men and 5 women, and no minors were identified.
The IRMC measures each month the intensity and geography of the risk Cubans face along their migration route: it combines the frequency of recorded events with the severity of their human impact and expresses them as a value between 0 and 1, sorted into four bands, low, moderate, high and extreme.
Sources: elTOQUE
Data updated: 2026-11-03T16:15:00.000Z