MIAMI, United States. – Two men were arrested Monday at a boat ramp in Marathon, Florida Keys, after trying to travel to Cuba and return to the United States with migrants, according to a statement from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.
According to statements by Adam Linhardt, spokesman for that entity, cited by Local 10 NewsPolice officers were notified shortly before 5:00 pm that a truck towing a boat was blocking southbound traffic.
“The trailer had one flat tire and one damaged tire,” Linhardt said in a news release. “The cabin-style cruiser had three 55-gallon fuel drums on board, as well as a fuel transfer pump, satellite phone, a GPS with waypoints to Cuba, several gallons of marine oil, a large supply of water and soft drinks. and numerous life jackets”, he specified.
According to Linhardt, one of the two detainees -Víctor Manuel Ríos Castillo, 29, of West Palm Beach- confessed that he planned to travel to Cuba to pick up migrants. For his part, Jorge Luis Fernández Rodríguez – 53 years old and a resident of Tampa – confessed that he was aware of the fuel drums on the boat that he was towing.
Cuba is experiencing a massive exodus that has surpassed the Mariel crisis and the rafters’ crisis of 1994. Since October 1, 2021, the beginning of the current fiscal year, only the crews of the US Coast Guard travel by sea. They have intercepted 5,456 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.
Every week, dozens of Cuban rafters They approach the coast of Florida, where they are generally intercepted by agents of the United States Coast Guard and then deported to the Island. However, many of them have perished at sea before reaching land.
Just last weekend US authorities intercepted 78 Cuban rafters in five different operations. The migrants crossed the Strait of Florida in rustic boats and made landfall in the southern keys of the peninsula, according to reported Border Patrol Agent Walter N. Slosar.
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