MIAMI — Three separate groups of Cuban migrants arrived in the Florida Keys within about 24 hours, the U.S. Border Patrol said.
In all, 33 people made landfall in the Keys between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning.
On Sunday, 11 people in a wooden fishing boat arrived in Key West just off Smathers Beach.
All were “medically screened” and taken into custody, according to a tweet by Chief Patrol Agent Walter N. Slosar, of the agency’s Miami sector.
On Monday morning, 22 Cuban migrants were taken into the agency’s custody after arriving in the Keys in two groups.
“During this fiscal year, agents have responded to 91 maritime smuggling events that have made landfall in Florida,” Slosar tweeted at noon Monday.
Maritime migration of Cubans and Haitians fleeing their homelands for South Florida has the Border Patrol, Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations busier than they’ve been in years.
In a video taken Sunday in Key West by a local resident, a group of men and women sat on a seawall at the beach off South Roosevelt Boulevard while several U.S. Border Patrol agents stood in front of them.
As they waited, with bottles of water beside them, bicyclists and walkers passed them by on the sidewalk. Several of the people who made the dangerous trip across the Florida Straits waved to onlookers.
“Ahhh these were the people waving at us on our way to the airport,” a Davenport, Florida, woman commented beneath the video posted on a Facebook page, tagging her husband.
The video also shows the wooden boat — with what appears to be a white cross affixed to the cabin’s top — used for the maritime migration attempt.
Around 1 a.m. Monday, 15 men and one woman arrived on shore in the Middle Keys city of Marathon in a rustic boat. They told agents they left Matanzas, Cuba, two days earlier, said Adam Hoffner, division chief of Customs and Border Protection’s Miami operations.
Then, around 7 a.m., six men arrived on Big Pine Key in the Lower Keys in a 10-foot inflatable boat powered by a small outboard engine, Hoffner said. They told agents they spent two days at sea after departing from Havana, Hoffner said.
None of the 22 migrants was injured or otherwise required medical care, said Hoffner, who added that the migrants are being processed for removal back to Cuba.
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