MIAMI – Lizbet Martinez, the Cuban “rafter girl” who warmed the hearts of U.S. Coast Guard officers and many others across the nation with her rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” ...

Cuban security officers capture exiles attempting to leave the Malecon waterfront in Havana, Cuba on June 4, 2009. Matt Lawrence has witnessed Cubans showing up dead in rafters from shark attacks.

Cuban rafters, known as Balseros, flee to the U.S. every summer when the sea is warm enough to survive the journey. But this year, the influx is unusually large.

Thirty-five years of Cold War hostility melted into this moment: 13 sunburned rafters stepping one by one off a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, returning against their will to Communist Cuba. “I fee… ...

The Cuban rafters who showed up off Key West on Saturday with gunshot wounds said a band of thieves attempted to steal their raft before leaving Cuba and shot them. None of the gunshots hit vital ...

A federal judge will soon decide whether the U.S.’s Cuba-specific immigration policy known colloquially as "wet foot, dry foot" applies to the 21 Cubans who clung to a lighthouse off the Florida ...

In the summer of 1994, Cuban rafters took to the water in unprecedented numbers trying to reach the United States. This photo by Miami Herald photographer Charles Trainor Jr. captures an image of ...

Once outside Cuba, the rafters faced the treacherous Gulf Stream and the Florida Straits. “The current was so strong,” Fernandez says. “It batted us back and forth as if we were a toy boat.

Cuban rafters face treacherous journey to reach U.S. Alan Gomez. USA TODAY. ABOARD USCGC RAYMOND EVANS — For Cubans trying to sneak out of their country and survive the 90-mile trek to reach the ...

The bodies surfaced 20 miles out from a popular South Florida beach: Four men, still youthful. Their remains were badly deteriorated, bitten by sharks, their faces unrecognizable.

As Fidel Castro celebrated yesterday the 50th anniversary of the start of the uprising that eventually brought him dictatorial power, something else, also about 50 years old and coming from Cuba ...

MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) - The number of Cubans making the dangerous journey across the Florida straits for a better life in the U.S. is up sharply this year. Nearly 3,000 have been picked up by U.S ...