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Pedro Pan started as a secret program created by the Catholic Welfare Bureau of Miami in December 1960 to send Cuban children to Miami. After Fidel Castro took control of Cuba from Dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, Castro began to change the constitution behind closed doors. The regime moved slowly into a totalitarian, Marxist-Leninist direction.  Castro's first action when he had full power was the closing of the private and Catholic schools, and subsequently, confiscating businesses and properties.  

After a rift in diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States, Catholic Charities of the Miami diocese, then Father Bryan Walsh, received authorization by the U.S. State Department to waive visa requirements for children 16 or under.  

Operation Pedro Pan airlifted more than 14,000 Cuban children from Havana to the United States during the early years of the Castro regime. Most of the parents of the Pedro Pan children thought it would be a short-term separation. As it turned out, some of the children never saw their parents again, while many reunited years later with their parents in America.