Making Migrants “Criminal”: The Mariel Boatlift, Miami, and U.S. Immigration Policy in the 1980s

Alexander M Stephens

doi:10.33596/anth.439

Abstract

In 1980, nearly 125,000 Cubans sailed to Florida in the mass migration now known as the Mariel Boatlift. They arrived amidst reports that Cuban officials had released many of them from prisons and forced them onto boats bound for the United States. A significant minority of these “Mariel Cubans” had been incarcerated at some point in the past, but press accounts often distorted their stories and they entered a United States with a growing anti-immigrant movement that contributed to a largely hostile reception. While many Mariel Cubans eventually became incorporated into the established South Florida Cuban community, some continued to struggle to find their way. The focus of this article is on this latter group. It reveals the exclusionary and punitive dynamics that emerged in response to them in Miami and how the resulting demands for policy change were scaled up by elected officials to shape developments at the federal level that ultimately made “criminals” out of a much broader group of people who crossed U.S. borders in the 1980s and beyond.

Highlights

On May 6, 1981, the Democratic Governor of Florida testified before Congress with a clear message for the federal government: get rid of them
In 1980, nearly 125,000 Cubans sailed to Florida in the mass migration known as the Mariel Boatlift
They arrived amidst reports that Cuban officials had released many of them from prisons and forced them onto boats bound for the United States

Summary

Welcome to Miami

Understanding how Mariel Cubans became archetypical “criminal aliens” requires an exploration of the dynamics surrounding their arrival in South Florida in 1980. They knew that the parole status of the boatlift arrivals could be rescinded as quickly as it was granted, and they knew that the terms of parole required Mariel Cubans to maintain a means of support and a permanent residence They claimed, though, that they lacked sufficient personnel to verify such information for everyone living on the street.[43] In October, INS representatives met with Dade County and City of Miami administrators and four local police departments. Vice President George Bush had recently announced the creation of a South Florida narcotics task force to integrate local and federal law enforcement efforts, but the authors of the report insisted that “[n]o drug interdiction effort will be successful unless it interdicts the flow of illegal aliens” (28) They were especially worried that there were insufficient funds for “the INS investigative unit charged with the responsibility of identifying illegal aliens” already living in the United States (32). Despite some efforts to avoid the distortions found in sensationalist news coverage, the members of the Grand Jury created yet another document that cast boatlift arrivals as noteworthy criminals

Scaling Up

Findings

Conclusion