He came from Cuba armed with a fork — his only defense against marauding groups of thieves and other dangers on a harrowing overland journey from Nicaragua to southern Mexico.

But the fork proved useless when the 33-year-old Havana taxi driver and three other family members found themselves surrounded by Mexican federal police agents, demanding thousands in bribes to allow them to cross the border from Guatemala on Thursday night.

They had already paid $5,500 for their group to cross through Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. Most of that fee went to a “coyote” — in their case a young woman and her son, who led them on horseback and car through the jungles of Honduras after the family had flown from Cuba to Nicaragua.

The family, who is now in hiding in a stuffy rented room in this steamy border city, spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity Friday. They fear they will be deported back to the Communist island after they approached a local human rights group to report the graft.

“It was late at night, and they [Mexican border patrol agents] surrounded us once we had crossed the border from Guatemala,” said the taxi driver, who was traveling with his 50-year-old mother, his 27- year-old wife and a 29-year-old male cousin.

“We sold everything we owned to get here, and now we have absolutely nothing.”

Local human rights activists say they have been documenting dozens of cases of government abuse in a city teeming with thousands of migrants — the remnants of the latest caravan of asylum seekers making their way from Central America to the US. The border with Guatemala is eight miles south of Tapachula.

Even a few Venezuelans have joined the exodus here trying to make it to the states, human rights workers told The Post. But most of those fleeing the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro seek to fly to Mexico City and take buses to border cities such as Matamoros and Reynosa before crossing the Rio Grande into Texas.

Cubans are more common in this border region and more likely targets, activists said.

“The Mexican authorities are raping the Cubans of their rights and forcing them to sign the deportation documents, said human rights activist Luis Garcia Villagran. “Cubans would rather die here than be sent back to Cuba.”

Rosember Lopez Samayoa, a local activist whose LGBT group is part of a coalition fighting for the migrants, explained that “Cubans are among the most vulnerable groups of migrants. Unlike the Central American migrants, there is no government representative to help the Cubans.”

While many Central American countries have diplomatic representation in Tapachula, Cuba has no consular presence here, which allows the Mexican government free rein to return them to their home country with no legal hurdles, activists said.

After deportation, returning Cubans are denied jobs and the government confiscates their passports. “They become pariahs, second-class citizens,” said Luis Garcia Villagran, a local human rights activist who runs a group called the Center for Human Dignity.

Last week, 93 Cuban migrants were flown back to Havana, Samayoa told The Post. A week earlier, 120 were sent back, he said.

For the most part, the Cuban visitors are generally better educated than the other migrants — which makes them trouble-makers in the eyes of the Mexican authorities, Samayoa said. “Many have university degrees and they know their rights,” he said.

There have been numerous riots, some of them violent, led by Cuban detainees at the Siglo XXI immigration detention center on the outskirts of the city where migrants have protested overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. The facility, which was built to hold 600, is believed to be holding more than 1,700, according to activists who have been allowed inside.

Last month, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute reported 1,300 Cubans escaped from the immigration detention center although they also reported that 700 eventually returned to the center.

The escape proved embarrassing for Mexican authorities who, in announcing the mass escape, were forced to admit the holding center was at double its capacity.

Although they are in hiding, the Havana taxi driver and his family told The Post they count themselves lucky not to be crammed into the detention center.

The group wants to remain in Mexico, which they described as a “paradise” compared to their home country, where they endured constant rationing and shortages of food and other necessities, they told The Post.

“We can’t believe all the abundance of fruit here,” said the taxi driver, adding that his wife, an X-ray technician, tasted a strawberry for the first time her life last week.

“We are prepared to do anything to stay,” he said. “I believe that if you are willing to work, you can have a decent life here.”