The white speck appears on the radar screen, bobbing in the surf far below as the waves crash into one another in the deep blue waters of the Florida Straits. A U.S. Coast Guard aviation electronics technician, manning the screen, leans forward for a closer look while cameras from the HC-144 turboprop airplane zero in.
A few minutes go by and the crew is still trying to determine if what is obviously a vessel is a fishing boat — or a migrant smuggling operation in process. Lt. Katrina Prout, the pilot, has already circled back once, and the crew decides it’s a false alarm. It’s a fishing boat.
As the number of Haitians and Cubans risking their lives at sea to reach the United States surges, the U.S. Coast Guard is stepping up its patrols to respond to the influx. On Friday, a five-plus hour patrol by air yielded two false alarms in the Florida Straits and one possible smuggling boat, left abandoned on Anguilla Cay in the Bahamas, the same place where last year three Cubans were stranded for 33 days. That’s an unusually quiet day compared to recent flights, Prout said.
