Plot

During the 1950s, an undercover U.S. Immigration investigator travels to Cuba to bust a crime ring that smuggles illegal-aliens into the USA but he falls in love with a smuggled woman.

There is a problem with foreign nationals using Cuba as a convenient jumping-off point for illegal entry into the United States. So U.S. Immigration Service Agent Peter Karczag (John Hodiak) is sent to Havana posing as a Hungarian frustrated with the legal immigration process and open to an alternative. By this means he uncovers the human smuggling ring run by Palinov (George Macready). He also meets concentration-camp refugee Marianne Lorress (Hedy Lamarr), a Viennese working in a nightclub and one who has paid to be smuggled into the United States. When Karczag falls in love with her, he becomes conflicted, not wanting her to be among those he plans to have captured in his operation. So he tries to persuade her to stay in Cuba instead of being secretly flown to the United States. Will he succeed? What if his cover is blown?—Fred Edwords <[email protected]>

Following the murder of a Cuban man on a busy street in New York City, Frank Westlake, the chief patrol inspector for the United States Department of Immigration, begins an investigation into the crime and its connection to an illegal alien smuggling racket headed by a man known as Palinov. Meanwhile, in Havana, Cuba, immigration detective Pete Karczag (John Hodiak) dedicates himself to the capture of Palinov. Posing as a Hungarian refugee desperate to gain entry into the United States, Pete befriends Palinov and offers him money to secure his passage to America. While waiting for Palinov to introduce him to a smuggler, Pete meets Marianne Lorress (Hedy Lamarr), a refugee from Vienna who survived internment in a German concentration camp. Late one night, Pete walks by a nightclub just as Marianne is being arrested for taking employment there without working papers. Thinking fast, Pete wins Marianne's release by posing as her husband. When one of Palinov's henchmen, Harry Nordell, discovers that Pete is really an American agent, he knocks him unconscious and reports his discovery to Palinov. Though Palinov later tells Pete that he knows who he is, Pete vows to continue his search for evidence. Later, however, Pete, having fallen deeply in love with Marianne, makes plans to resign from his job so that he may stay in Cuba and continue his romance. Marianne leaves Pete when Palinov tells her that he is an American immigration agent. Harry is given orders to kill Pete, but Pete manages to overpower him and then forces him to confess that a man named Archer Delby James is the pilot who will be flying Palinov's plane to the United States later that night. After informing Westlake about the illegal flight and its pilot, Pete returns to the United States to help plan the interception of the airplane. Meanwhile, Palinov, realizing that immigration officials are closing in on him, decides to flee Cuba with the next group that James will be smuggling to the United States. Among the six passengers whom Palinov is smuggling is Marianne, but Palinov plans to make her his captive once they arrive in America. As American Navy planes follow the smugglers, Pete, aware that Marianne is on the airplane, monitors the flight's progress with apprehension. When Palinov and James spot the Navy planes, they attempt to escape capture by crash-landing the plane in the Florida Everglades. After they kill one passenger and abandon the others, Palinov and James take Marianne and attempt a getaway on a small life raft. While Westlake rescues the abandoned airplane passengers, Pete takes a motor boat to the site of the crash and finds Marianne with Palinov. Aware that the gas tank is empty and that Palinov will not be able to escape, Pete then trades his boat for Marianne. Once safely in Pete's custody, Marianne accepts the penalty for entering the country illegally, but looks forward to a happy future with Pete.

The death of a pedestrian named Ramon Santez in a vehicular accident in New York City alerts the NYPD to transfer the case to US Immigration (INS) in evidence indicating Santez as a recent illegal arrival into the country via a human smuggling ring, INS identifying it as one operating out of what is known as one of the primary waystations into the US of Havana, Cuba. The organization also identifies it as being operated by a man named Palinov out of the front of the Gulf Stream Café in Havana. The Cuban authorities can do nothing in there being nothing illegal for them in smuggling people out of the country, and INS having no jurisdiction in Cuba. Regardless, Frank Westlake, the head of INS in Miami, assigns agent Pete Karczag to lead the investigation. As Palinov has spotted any undercover agent the Cuban authorities have planted in the café, Karczag goes undercover in Havana as wealthy Hungarian national Josef Gombocz trying unsuccessfully to immigrate into the US, just the type of person that would come to Palinov's attention as a possible "client". The ruse works. In the process, Karczag meets beautiful Austrian national Marianne Lorress, another of Palinov's clients. Karczag thus comes into the conflict of being able to arrest Palinov and shutting down the ring against falling not only in love with Marianne but with her story of needing to get into the US, thus he seeing immigration from a different light between what is legal and not legal.—Huggo