On Sunday, January 23, a 25-foot boat carrying 40 illegal migrants capsized in the Florida Straits, killing all but one, who was rescued by a passing boater. The accident occurred about 40 miles east of Fort Pierce, Florida, and set off a days-long search by the U.S. Coast Guard. The search team, consisting of numerous Coast Guard cutters and air crews, searched more than 10,500 square miles of ocean, finding five dead, until finally discontinuing the search on Thursday, January 27.
The survivor, identified as Juan Esteban Montoya of Colombia, told rescuers the boat had left Bimini on Saturday evening, run into severe weather, and capsized Sunday morning. He said his 18-year-old sister had also been on board. None of the passengers had been wearing life jackets. Montoya was transported to a local hospital, suffering from dehydration. Authorities said he was being treated as a “victim, not a suspect.”
In an article entitled, “A Surge at Sea: Migrants Seek Entry to the U.S. Aboard Flimsy Boats,” the NY Times noted that the incident came “amid a surge in seaborne migration on both coasts as thousands of people board flimsy boats in a desperate attempt to reach the United States.” The Times continued:
The makeshift boatlifts, carrying migrants from countries all over the world, present an unexpected and fresh challenge for the Biden administration, which was already facing a substantial increase in unauthorized crossings on the southern land border with Mexico.
Ignoring the obvious point that every challenge to this administration seems to be “unexpected,” the Times writers admit that there is “a president in the White House who had promised a softer approach to the border than his predecessor [so that] smugglers and migrants have felt emboldened.” They quote a former DHS official who says, “The perception among migrants and smugglers is that Biden has essentially loosened the rules.”
This perception has resulted in an unprecedented surge. In the 2021 fiscal year, more than 3,200 migrants were intercepted while trying to reach the U.S. by sea. Southern California saw 1,968 such apprehensions, while Florida authorities detained 1,316 Cubans, Haitians, and Dominicans, the nationalities most represented. Those numbers of course represent only people who were actually detained. The numbers getting through or lost en route are unknown.
Mark Levan, an twenty-year agent with the Office of Air and Marine operations in San Diego, told the Times that many ocean-going migrants succeed in entering undetected. “They wouldn’t be doing it if they weren’t getting away,” he said, adding, “It’s the worst it’s ever been.”
In May, 10 Cubans died and eight others survived a shipwreck south of Key West. In July, a boat 26 miles out from Cuba capsized, killing nine. In a two-week period in August, authorities on the West Coast halted six smuggling attempts. Earlier this month, six illegals, from the Bahamas, Ecuador, and Columbia, were rescued when their vessel began taking on water. And just the day before the most recent event, another boat from the Bahamas, with 31 aboard, capsized; all were rescued.
The Times also interviewed one Ruber Sosa Lechuga, a Cuban who says in 2006 he paid a smuggler $2,500 to transport him and his family from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. Although the voyage was dangerous and he says he now advises countrymen to “try to do things legally,” his own example argues otherwise. Once in America, he was allowed to remain and is now a long-time resident of Fort Myers, Florida.
For his part, Cuban-born Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, insisted last July that people trying to migrate by sea would not be permitted to enter the United States.
Right. Of course not.
For more, see the NY Times.