15 migrants land in the Keys. ‘S.O.S. Cuba’ was printed on the side of their small boat
A group of 15 people from Cuba came ashore in the Florida Keys Tuesday, continuing a trend of increased maritime migration from the island nation to South Florida not seen in five years.
The migrants arrived on Sombrero Beach in the Middle Keys city of Marathon around 9 a.m. in a rustic wooden boat with the words “S.O.S. Cuba” written on the hull, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.
Customs and Border Protection Division Chief Adam Hoffner said the group consisted of 12 men and three women who said they left from the Matanzas region of Cuba.
Their arrival comes as South Florida-based Border Patrol agents, agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations and the Coast Guard report being the busiest they’ve been patrolling the Florida Straits since 2017.
The federal government tracks migration by the fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1. With fiscal year 2022 less than four months old, migration attempts from Cuba to Florida are catching up to what they were at the end of FY 2021, according to the Coast Guard.
The agency said crews have stopped 586 people since Oct. 1. By the end of FY 2021, 838 people were stopped, which was already a spike from FY 2020, when only 49 people were caught at sea making the dangerous voyage.
These numbers don’t count people who landed and then were caught and taken into custody by the Border Patrol.
The Coast Guard announced Tuesday that it had returned a total of 119 people back to Cuba who were caught at sea during 12 separate incidents since last Thursday.
Since the United States’ policy of “wet foot, dry foot” ended in the beginning of 2017, almost all Cubans, regardless of whether they were caught at sea or on land, are sent back to their country. The policy had allowed those who set foot on U.S. soil above the high-water mark to stay and apply for permanent residency after a year. Those stopped on the water were taken back to Cuba.
“Wet foot, dry foot” offered an incentive for people from Cuba to risk their lives trying to make it to the States, often in dangerously unseaworthy boats. When it ended, the numbers of people attempting to flee Cuba dropped dramatically.
The recent spike is attributed by experts on Cuba to increasingly hostile and deteriorating political and economic conditions within the island nation.
The landing comes less than a week after a cargo tanker crew rescued 19 Cuban migrants from the water off Islamorada in the Upper Keys Friday after their raft flipped over. One person in the group needed medical assistance, according to the Coast Guard.
Immigration officials operating in South Florida are also reporting an increase in maritime migration from Haiti. On Dec. 24, a group of 52 people from Haiti arrived off Card Sound Road in Key Largo in a wooden sailboat with the words “Blood of Jesus” written on the side.
A month earlier, 63 people from Haiti arrived in almost the same spot off the rural Card Sound Road on another wooden sailboat. Members of that group told Border Patrol agents they were at sea on the vessel for three weeks.
