Ten Cuban migrants landed in a canal-front neighborhood in the Florida Keys Tuesday morning, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.
The group, all men, arrived in a makeshift pontoon boat that resembled a floating bed, according to a photo released by the Border Patrol.
According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, the landing happened around 5 a.m. in a canal off Tingler Lane in the Middle Keys city of Marathon.
Adam Hoffner division chief of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Miami sector, said one of the men was taken to a hospital for treatment, but has since been released to Border Patrol agents.
The men told agents they departed from Matanzas, Cuba, but Hoffner said it’s not clear how long they were at sea.
“We are still investigating that information,” Hoffner said.
The landing comes less than a week after the U.S. Coast Guard reported that its crews saved 10 Cuban migrants from a sinking boat off Key Largo. That rescue happened Thursday after a Coast Guard air crew spotted the distressed vessel.
“They didn’t have lifejackets or safety equipment,” Capt. Shawn Koch, commanding officer of Air Station Miami, said in a statement released on Twitter. “If the air crew hadn’t found them on the patrol, these people would not have survived the night.”
Six people in that group were returned to Cuba on Saturday, the Coast Guard said.
Both incidents are part of a spike in maritime migration from Cuba and Haiti as the economic and political climate in both nations continues to deteriorate. Several of these treks have proved tragic recently, including an incident in late January in which an overloaded boat with 40 people from different countries on board flipped over en route from the Bahamas to Fort Pierce Inlet.
Five bodies were recovered, and one person survived. The Coast Guard said the 34 other people likely died trying to stay afloat in the ocean, and the agency called off the search. Homeland Securities Investigations said human smugglers were responsible for the doomed journey, which is still under investigation.
The Coast Guard and other federal agencies enforcing U.S. immigration laws track migration attempts by the fiscal year, which begins and ends Oct. 1. Already this fiscal year, the number of Cubans trying to reach the United States by sea has almost surpassed all of fiscal year 2021 — 700 compared to 838 people.
And, the Coast Guard was already seeing a surge in migrants compared with fiscal year 2020, when only 49 people from Cuba were stopped along the Florida Straits.
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