Operation Peter Pan

Operation Peter Pan (or Operación Pedro Pan) was a politicized exodus of over 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban minors ages 6 to 18 to the United States over a two-year span from 1960 to 1962. They were sent by parents who feared that Fidel Castro and the Communist party were planning to terminate parents' legal custody (or "patria potestad", in Spanish) of their children, and place minors in alleged "communist indoctrination centers". No such actions by the Castro regime ever took place. The program consisted of two main components: the mass transportation of Cuban children via airplane to the United States – Miami as a particularly common hub – and the programs set up to care for them once they arrived. Both were led by Father Bryan O. Walsh of the Catholic Welfare Bureau. The operation was the largest exodus of minor refugees in the Western Hemisphere at the time. It operated covertly out of fear that it would be viewed as an anti-Castro political enterprise.