Thousands of Cuban immigrants, many whom have trekked across Central America through Mexico after escaping Cuba, are preparing to cross the border into the US over the next few days. The influx is only going to increase over the coming weeks and months.

At least 7,000 Cuban refugees are expected to come to the border in the next coming days.

The activity at the Hidalgo International Bridge continues. For 40 years, Jose Angel Rodriguez has made his living driving a cab.

He said he’s seeing more Cubans crossing the port of entry. “They get here every night, in the morning, and at night they get here. They go to Laredo, too,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez remembered taking a few to a hotel or store. It gets busier each week that passes by.

Down the road from the bridge were a handful of 15-passenger vans. They had Florida license plates. Giovanni Acosta is one of them.

“In Cuba, there’s nothing. There’s no freedom. We came from Cuba because the pressure that we have there,” Giovanni Acosta said.

Acosta said he’s waiting for his wife to come to the bridge so he can take her back to Miami. She’s taking the same track as he once did. “I did the same path, like all the Cubans did. I came from Ecuador. I walked for 27 days on the road,” he said.

Congressman Henry Cuellar’s office said Cuban refugees are coming to Laredo’s Point of Entry every day and the numbers are increasing. They’re coming from Central America through Mexico to the border.

Acosta’s van can take more than just his family. He said he can help the Cuban refugees, but his goal is to pick up his family, to bring them safely back home.

You can blame the "normalization" of relations with Cuba for the increase. Sometime in the near future, Cubans coming to the US will no longer recieve special consideration as refugees. Knowing this, Cubans are flocking to countries like Costa Rica where they can start the long journey to the US and freedom.

Cuban refugees have been coming to the US since the dawn of the Castro regime. But this big increase in new arrivals has its origin in policies of President Obama that will keep the Cuban people imprisoned on their island. In the future, if Cubans enter the country, they will do so as illegal immigrants rather than refugees from the oppressive Castro regime.