Around a dozen migrants fled after arriving in Miami in a smuggling boat on Wednesday. The Border Patrol is looking for them after finding the empty boat and they are suspected of being Cubans.
Border Patrol sources, which have not officially reported the incident, revealed to the local press that the migrants arrived in Miami on a Mako boat with two high-powered engines and without markings that would allow them to be traced. Agents found the boat tied up on a dock with some clothes behind some apartment buildings between 92nd Street and East Bay Harbor Drive early this morning.
Agents found the boat tied up on a dock with some clothes behind some apartment buildings between 92nd Street and East Bay Harbor Drive early this morning.
The CBS Miami television network interviewed two people in the area, including the maintenance manager of one of the neighboring buildings, who said that a friend of his usually records the arrivals of rafters with his cell phone.
“He told me that he saw 8 or 12 migrants jumping out of a boat that stopped next to his and they started running towards the next street. When he got there, they had already left. He believes that a vehicle was waiting for them,” explained the interviewed, James Reynolds. The employee considers it crazy that there are people who arrive like this and expressed that he would like the migrants to arrive legally.
“I’ve been here 15 years and I’ve never seen anything like this. My boat was docked right next to where the immigrants were docking and I saw the helicopter up there and everything. I think this kind of thing shouldn’t happen. There should be some kind of control. It surprises me that they have come so far from the canal and from Haulover, “a local merchant told the chain.
CBS also spoke with a neighbor who supported the version that this arrival was planned due to the fact that a vehicle was waiting for the migrants.
Although at this time the US Coast Guard has not spoken about the nationality of the migrants, witnesses to the event told Telemundo that the appearance of the rafters was Hispanic, which makes one suspect that they were Cubans and not Haitians, the two nationalities that usually arrive in this area by boat.
According to the Coast Guard, in the last two months, 293 Cubans have been intercepted, a high number if one takes into account that in the entire previous fiscal year – which ended on September 30 – 838 were arrested.
On the other hand, so far in 2021 1,137 Cubans have been returned to the island in 55 operations: 46 from the United States, five from the Bahamas, three from Mexico and one from the Cayman Islands.
According to the Coast Guard, in the last two months 293 Cubans have been intercepted, a high number if one takes into account that in the entire previous fiscal year 838 were detained.
The Cuban government recently attributed the increase in emigration to the failure of the United States to deliver 20,000 visas a year, the entry into force of the Adjustment Law and the strengthening of the embargo.
On the other hand, from the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, Orlando Gutiérrez attributed the growth to several causes this Wednesday, led by the political and economic disaster created by the Government of Havana. “First there are the intolerable economic and political conditions that the dictatorship has imposed on the Cuban people. The regime is making life intolerable for many people on the island.”
The exiled activist said that it causes concern among Cuban Americans that their compatriots on the island are exposing themselves to serious dangers in order to leave Cuba. “The Straits of Florida is very rugged and the seas are full of sharks. We have seen thousands of Cubans die after trying to get out of the dictatorship and the reality is that life under that regime is so painful that people are making that decision “.
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