The U.S. Coast Guard stopped an overloaded sailboat with almost 180 persons crammed on its deck off the Bahamas Sunday evening.
The 179 people today have been first sighted by a Coastline Guard air crew close to 11 p.m. sailing about 30 miles off Andros Island, the agency mentioned.
Two cutters, the Self confidence and the Harriet Lane, stopped the vessel and took the folks on board. The Coast Guard said they were transferred to the custody of the Royal Bahamian Defense Power on Tuesday.
The federal governing administration tracks maritime migration by the fiscal calendar year, beginning and ending Oct. 1. If the figures of Haitian migrants stopped at sea continue on their recent trajectory, fiscal 12 months 2022 will surpass last fiscal calendar year, which saw the most persons interdicted by the Coastline Guard due to the fact FY 2019.
Considering that Oct, the Coast Guard stopped 993 Haitian migrants headed to Florida, compared to 1,527 in all of fiscal year 2021. In fiscal 12 months 2020, the Coastline Guard only encountered 418 individuals from Haiti at sea.
The Coast Guard is also looking at a surge in Cuban migrants on the Florida Straits, the most because fiscal calendar year 2017. Experts level to deteriorating financial and political circumstances in just both of those nations.
Sunday’s stop also carries on a trend of Haitians boarding overloaded sailboats as a migration implies. In January, a team of 176 men and women ended up stopped close to the exceptional gated north Critical Largo neighborhood of Ocean Reef.
On Christmas Eve, the Border Patrol took 52 people from Haiti into custody just after their sailboat arrived off a distant two-lane highway in the vicinity of Ocean Reef identified as Card Sound Road. In November, 63 Haitian migrants also arrived on a sailboat in virtually the identical spot off Card Audio Highway.
The Coast Guard Tuesday issued a assertion urging migrants from both of those Cuba and Haiti not to chance their life seeking to migrate to the States on such journeys. Not only is it really risky, migrants are likely to be returned to their homelands if caught.
“The probability of a successful migration voyage is small, and when these voyages are stopped, persons must count on to be returned to their nation of origin,” Lt. Vladimir Jimenez, regulation enforcement responsibility officer with the Seventh Coastline Guard District command center, claimed.
This story was at first revealed March 1, 2022 4:56 PM.
David Goodhue addresses the Florida Keys and South Florida for FLKeysNews.com and the Miami Herald. Prior to joining the Herald, he covered Congress, the Environmental Defense Agency and the Section of Electricity in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of the University of Delaware.