MIAMI, United States. – A charred raft with a Cuban police uniform reached the shores of Surfside, a city north of Miami Beach, at noon this Sunday, according to images posted on facebook by the filmmaker Manuel Zayas, a witness to the event.
“The raft arrived at North Miami Beach, at the height of 89th and Collins streets,” Zayas told CyberCubaalthough, according to the photos, the boat would have made landfall in Surfside, very close to the border with North Beach.
“There were shoes, leftover food, [un] PNR officer uniform, an intact fuel tank and remains of clothing and other burned objects”, Zayas also specified.
While the police shirt (on which the number 39762 can be read) was intact, the raft arrived almost completely burned.
There were no human remains on top of the boat, although Zayas touched “something with the smell of decomposed meat,” according to what he told CyberCuba.
According to the witness, the bathers who were in the area were “stunned” by the arrival of the boat in such a state.
Every week, dozens of Cuban rafters They approach the coast of Florida, where they are generally intercepted by United States Coast Guard agents and then deported to the Island.
Also this Sunday, US Border Patrol agents. stopped to a Cuban migrant after crossing the Straits of Florida in an inflatable kayak and making landfall in Marathon.
Just one day before, this Saturday, another 27 Cuban rafters reached the Florida Keys on two different boats.
This Saturday, the crews of the Robert Yered and Pablo Valents Coast Guard repatriated 203 Cuban rafters, after 14 rescue operations off the coast of Florida, according to an official statement of the Coast Guard.
The 14 operations were carried out in the space of three days, from Tuesday, August 16 to Thursday, August 18.
Less than 24 hours earlier, last Friday, the Coast Guard repatriated another 106 Cubans and four dogs trying to reach the shores of the United States.
“The possibility of being apprehended by Coast Guard crews while illegally migrating through the Straits of Florida is extremely high,” said Lieutenant Commander Mark Cobb of the 7th Coast Guard District. “No one should risk their lives on unsafe rustic boats in unpredictable seas,” he added.
Since October 1, 2021, the beginning of the current fiscal year, US Coast Guard crews have intercepted 4,440 Cubans, a figure that exceeds the number of migrants from the island intercepted each fiscal year from 2017 to 2021.
According to the agency, the statistics have behaved as follows: 5,396 Cubans intercepted in fiscal year 2016; 1,468 in 2017; 259 in 2018; 313 in 2019; 49 in 2020 and 838 in 2021.
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