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The three Cuban baseball players and coach who remain in Nassau–along with an estimated 200 other defectors–could be sent back to the country they fled under a repatriation agreement between the Bahamas and Cuba. Bahamian authorities refused to grant the players asylum after the United Nations High Commission on Refugees ruled that they had not been victims of political persecution, an assertion that has angered many members of the Cuban exile community in Miami.
Immigration authorities in Costa Rica, which has provided a haven for many defectors in the past, are temporarily paralyzed by a scandal involving the illegal sale of visas. The time frame for any decision on repatriation is uncertain.