Las Vegas becomes a new magnet for Cubans looking for a place to build a life

For a growing number of Cubans coming to the United States, the first stop is no longer Miami. It is Las Vegas.

Federal border data on 4.5 million migrants who crossed from Mexico between October 2018 and September 2025 shows where people said they were headed. An analysis of those numbers found that Cubans made up 41 percent of the migrants bound for Nevada, the second-highest share of any state after Kentucky.

All of that growth has landed in Southern Nevada. Cubans account for more than half of the migrant population in Las Vegas and about 45 percent of it in Henderson.

From Miami to the desert

Chef Dennis Martinez Miranda, 47, is part of that wave. He fled political turmoil in Cuba and settled in Miami in the early 2010s. About eight years later he moved west after meeting the friends who became his business partners. Together they opened the Cuban restaurant Cubanidad 1885, which now has three locations.

He called the move a challenge but also a chance to prosper, a phrase he said Cubans love to use. His restaurant has catered for the Las Vegas Raiders. He said other Cuban businesses nearby, including Carlito's Cuban Food, are thriving too. He was surprised, he said, by how big a Cuban community he found and how welcoming the city has been.

Why the map changed

An analyst at the Migration Policy Institute who studies Cuban migration said the shift makes sense. The end of the "wet foot, dry foot" policy in 2017, which had let any Cuban who touched U.S. soil stay and later become a legal resident, moved the main route from Florida to Central America and Mexico.

Many newer arrivals lack the family ties to Florida that earlier waves had, she said, so they are more open to work elsewhere. A collapsing economy back home has also fueled one of the largest exoduses in the island's history. She said affordability helped turn Houston into a lively Cuban hub and the same draw may explain the pull of Clark County.

A community with deep roots

Cuban Nevadans have been building for decades. Cuban entrepreneur Otto Merida founded the state's Latin Chamber of Commerce in 1976 to help Latinos in Clark County gain political and social power. Its current president, Peter Guzman, left Cuba at age 2 after his father lost his job. At the chamber's 50th anniversary he said he hopes it keeps pushing for a dignified life and the American dream for all Latinos and all immigrants.