MIAMI -- After trying to first float to the United States in a 1951 Chevy truck and then in a 1959 Buick, a Cuban family has finally made it, this time by taxi. Luis Grass RodrÃguez, 36, his wife, Isora Hernández Hernández, 27, and their son, Angel Luis, 5, arrived in Miami on Sunday, more than a year after their second unsuccessful attempt.
"I had a desire to leave Cuba, to live in a place where I wouldn't be bothered, where my children could have a better future and, above all else, freedom," said Grass, who made it to Texas in a cab from Mexico this month. "Unfortunately, that does not exist in Cuba." The Grass family was among the Cubans who made headlines in July 2003 by using a vintage vehicle as a makeshift boat. After their second unsuccessful attempt in February of last year, the U.S. Coast Guard took them to the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. After 10 months, U.S. officials relocated the Grass family to Costa Rica in December, and from there the three made their way to Mexico, where on March 12 they took a taxi across the U.S. border at Brownsville, Texas. They asked for political asylum, and federal immigration officials admitted them into the country. Grass, a mechanic, recounted how he and his friends made his Chevy amphibious, assembled it on a beach and launched it in the middle of the night. Cuban Coast Guard officers saw them, but could not believe ....
