The U.S. Coastline Guard stopped an overloaded sailboat with approximately 180 men and women crammed on its deck off the Bahamas Sunday night time.
The 179 persons had been 1st sighted by a Coast Guard air crew around 11 p.m. sailing about 30 miles off Andros Island, the company stated.
Two cutters, the Self-confidence and the Harriet Lane, stopped the vessel and took the men and women on board. The Coast Guard mentioned they had been transferred to the custody of the Royal Bahamian Protection Power on Tuesday.
The federal authorities tracks maritime migration by the fiscal 12 months, starting and ending Oct. 1. If the quantities of Haitian migrants stopped at sea go on on their current trajectory, fiscal calendar year 2022 will surpass past fiscal calendar year, which saw the most individuals interdicted by the Coastline Guard since FY 2019.
Due to the fact October, the Coastline Guard stopped 993 Haitian migrants headed to Florida, in comparison to 1,527 in all of fiscal 12 months 2021. In fiscal 12 months 2020, the Coast Guard only encountered 418 persons from Haiti at sea.
The Coastline Guard is also viewing a surge in Cuban migrants on the Florida Straits, the most since fiscal year 2017. Gurus place to deteriorating economic and political situations in just both nations.
Sunday’s halt also continues a pattern of Haitians boarding overloaded sailboats as a migration suggests. In January, a group of 176 folks were being stopped in close proximity to the exclusive gated north Vital Largo group of Ocean Reef.
On Xmas Eve, the Border Patrol took 52 folks from Haiti into custody following their sailboat arrived off a remote two-lane highway around Ocean Reef identified as Card Sound Road. In November, 63 Haitian migrants also arrived on a sailboat in virtually the similar locale off Card Audio Highway.
The Coastline Guard Tuesday issued a statement urging migrants from each Cuba and Haiti not to chance their lives seeking to migrate to the States on this kind of journeys. Not only is it exceptionally perilous, migrants are probably to be returned to their homelands if caught.
“The probability of a successful migration voyage is low, and when these voyages are stopped, people today really should count on to be returned to their country of origin,” Lt. Vladimir Jimenez, regulation enforcement obligation officer with the Seventh Coastline Guard District command centre, reported.
This tale was at first posted March 1, 2022 4:56 PM.
David Goodhue covers the Florida Keys and South Florida for FLKeysNews.com and the Miami Herald. Just before becoming a member of the Herald, he lined Congress, the Environmental Protection Company and the Division of Energy in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of the College of Delaware.
