The United States Coast Guard rescued this Tuesday, at the request of the Bahamas authorities, 31 people who were adrift on the high seas. Among them were 28 Cubans, three Chinese, a Jamaican and a Dominican. The migrants were picked up by the ship Robert Jered and handed over to the Royal Bahamas Defense Force (RBDF), the US Coast Guard reported on its Twitter account.
The 28 Cubans “rescued” this Tuesday are added to the six who, on September 6, were detained and handed over to the RBDF, after the boat in which they were transported to Florida was intercepted by the US Coast Guard.
The smuggling of migrants by sea has increased in the last month. On Monday it was reported that Didier Pérez Pérez, Lester Leyniel Soca Díaz and Yoandy Alonso They face six charges for transferring Cuban rafters to Florida and kidnapping them in a house in Hialeah, extorting their relatives, of Cuban origin and residents in Florida, for the sum of 15,000 dollars. If found guilty, they will be sentenced to 10 years in prison and will be required to pay fines of $250,000.
The US Coast Guard reported this Wednesday that from October 2021 to date, 6,032 rafters have been intercepted and detained. Also I know repatriated 50 more Cubanson board the ship Paul Valentinewhich were added to the 68 who returned last Tuesday in the Paul Clark.
The Cuban exodus has been considered an authentic “migratory catastrophe” by the Cuban virologist based in Brazil, Amílcar Pérez-Riverol. The number of rafters intercepted in their attempt to reach the US, recalls the scientist, “exceeds the total of the previous five years.” In 2017 they arrested 1,468; in 2018 there were 259; in 2019, 313; in 2020, 49; and in 2021, 838, according to official figures.
The data is even more alarming if one considers that during this fiscal year 180,000 Cubans have entered the United States by land. And no record takes into account those who have emigrated to Europe and Latin America, which according to Pérez-Riverol’s calculations are equivalent to ” 1.6% of the population and 2.5% of the entire labor force.”
The flight of Cubans by sea has not diminished despite Hurricane Fiona, which continues its path towards the Caribbean and Atlantic islands. On Monday, the Florida Border Patrol rescued and “taken into custody six rafters who were stranded” in the Marquesas Keys. The head of this police force, Walter Slosar, warned of the dangers of going to sea in a “homemade boat in hurricane season.”
For her part, a non-commissioned officer of the Coast Guard, Nicole Groll, pointed out through a statement issued on Tuesday that “migration in rustic and improvised boats without safety equipment, such as a life jacket, is dangerous,” and stressed to the rafters who “risk their lives in this way causes their loved ones unnecessary anxiety about not knowing if they are safe or lost at sea”.
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