David, Panama, May 21 (EFE).– Panamanian authorities have stopped selling tickets for Mexico-bound flights to transfer nearly 4,000 Cubans stranded in the Central American country since last December, an immigration official told EFE.

Dozens of Cubans trying to make their way to the United States have been waiting in line in this western city, capital of Chiriqui province, to purchase the $575 ticket from Copa Airlines.

The regional head of the National Immigration Service in Chiriqui, Alfredo Cordoba, told EFE Friday that the ticket sale deadline had arrived and thus Panama had complied with the second part of the humanitarian operation agreed with Mexico earlier this month.

“Thus far, 2,605 Cubans have traveled to Mexico; 1,390 people still need to be transferred,” he said.

“In the shelter in Gualaca, in Chiriqui, we have 335 ready to travel,” and of the remaining group of nearly 1,000 a portion have left Panama by their own means and others took advantage through Friday of the air bridge,” he said.

An additional 70 Cubans are recent arrivals in that province who were demanding to travel, Cordoba said, adding that those individuals have only been offered lodging and food at the shelter because they are not included on the list of beneficiaries of the agreement with Mexico.

Mexico and Panama reached an agreement on May 6 for the transfer of more than 3,500 Cuban migrants stranded since last December on Panama’s border with Costa Rica.

Cuban beneficiaries of the accord arrive by plane from Panama to the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and continue on from there by bus in a bid to enter the United States.

That agreement was struck after Costa Rica, which struggled to cope with an initial wave of Cuban migrants between November and March, said earlier this year it would not allow entry to any more migrants from the Caribbean island.

Some 8,000 Cubans became stranded starting in mid-November in Costa Rica and Panama after Nicaragua refused to provide them passage through its territory.

Under an initial agreement with Mexico, 6,003 made their way to that country from Costa Rica and Panama.

There has been a surge in the number of Cubans trying to make their way to the United States through Central America and Mexico in recent months, following the restoration of full diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana.

That rapprochement has stirred fears among Cubans that the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act will be repealed.

Under that law and the accompanying policy known as “wet foot, dry foot,” Cubans who reach U.S. soil are entitled to remain in the country and become legal residents, while those intercepted at sea are almost always repatriated to the island. EFE