There has been much talk, here and elsewhere, about the large numbers of Haitian migrants crossing or attempting to cross our southern border from Mexico. For example, most of the 15,000-16,000 migrants under the Del Rio bridge in September were from Haiti, at least originally. Most of them had lived in South America for months or years before reaching the U.S., but increasingly, the Border Patrol is finding Haitians fresh from their home island attempting to reach American territory by sea.
Andrew R. Arthur of CIS.org is reporting today that the number of Haitian migrants arriving by boat is on the rise. He notes that the Washington Post on November 20 revealed that “more than 1,500 Haitian nationals were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard in FY 2021, three times as many as in FY 2020, and the largest number in five years.”
The Border Patrol in Puerto Rico confirms the growing problem, announcing that in the first two months of FY 2022, they intercepted more than 300 illegal Haitian migrants. Dominican authorities, for their part, report having interdicted 853 migrants and 139 small boats known as yolas so far this calendar year.
Puerto Rico lies about 80 miles from the Dominican Republic side of Hispaniola, across a dangerous strait known as the “Mona Passage.” About midway through the Passage is an uninhabited 22-square-mile rock called Mona Island. Politically and geographically part of Puerto Rico, Mona is thus U.S. territory, and as such has become a favorite dropping-off point for human smugglers. Eighty-one Haitian migrants were dumped there in September, prompting Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Natural Resources to ask that Border Patrol agents be stationed on the island around the clock. The outcome of that request is unknown.
As Arthur admits, 1,500 migrants compared with the 1.66 million illegal migrants apprehended on land in FY 2021 doesn’t seem like much. But seaborn Haitian migrants are a growing phenomenon and constitute, in Arthur’s words, “a new front in the border crisis.”
Just what we needed.
For more, see CIS.org.