MIAMI — Twenty-seven Cuban migrants landed at Higgs Beach in Key West Saturday morning, among them were eight children.
According to Monroe County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Adam Linhardt, they were taken into U.S. Border Patrol custody after making landfall in Key West onboard a wooden boat.
Of the 27 people, eight were children, eight were women and 11 were men. The group refused medical attention, Linhardt said.
Key West police and Monroe sheriff officers responded. U.S. Border Patrol has the group in custody, according to border patrol Chief Walter Slosar.
The U.S. Coast Guard has stopped at sea over 3,000 Florida-bound Cuban migrants since October — more than the last five fiscal years combined, according to the agency, the Miami Herald reported earlier this month.
More than 140,000 Cubans have been detained at U.S. borders between October and May, surpassing the Mariel exodus of 1980 when 125,000 Cubans departed from the Port of Mariel near Havana between April and October 1980.
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