MIAMI — The U.S. Coast Guard is preparing to call off its search Thursday for dozens of migrants who disappeared in the ocean after their boat capsized about 40 miles off Fort Pierce Inlet shortly after it left the Bahamas en route to Florida.
Five bodies have been recovered since Wednesday and one survivor was rescued. There were 40 migrants on the boat when it capsized.
But the Coast Guard said during a news briefing at Miami Beach that there is little chance any more survivors other than the one man found resting on the bow of the overturned 25-foot vessel.
The agency said the search for others would end by sunset Thursday unless any information comes in allowing the agency to refine its search, said Capt. Jo-Ann Burdian, commander of Coast Guard Sector Miami.
“It does mean we think it’s unlikely anyone else survived,” Burdian told reporters during a news briefing at the Coast Guard’s Miami Beach base.
The case is under investigation as a criminal human smuggling matter by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, which would not comment Thursday on the nationalities of the migrants.
“That’s a lot of what we’re trying to piece together right now,” Anthony Salisbury, chief agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in Miami, said at the briefing.
The survivor, saved by the crew of a barge-towing tugboat on its way back to Jacksonville from Puerto Rico, said the migrant vessel went down in stormy weather not long after it left Bimini. He told the Coast Guard that the boat was carrying 40 people, including himself.
The survivor possibly a Colombian national, was found about 8 a.m. Monday about 40 miles east of Fort Pierce Inlet. The Coast Guard recovered one body Wednesday morning and four others since.
Burdian said the agency, along with other federal, state and local agencies, launched a massive air and sea search after the survivor was found. So far, Burdian said the search spanned from the Fort Pierce Inlet area to around Port Canaveral.
Saturday’s tragedy occurred in the midst of a surge in maritime migration to South Florida, mostly involving people from Cuba and Haiti looking to escape the political and economic turmoil within their countries.
The federal government tracks migration by the fiscal year, which begins and ends Oct. 1. Four months into this fiscal year, seaborne migration from both Cuba and Haiti is on track to surpass fiscal year 2021, which was up significantly from the previous year.
The Coast Guard reported this week that it has stopped more than 800 Haitians at sea attempting to reach the U.S. In all of fiscal year 2021, the agency stopped 1,527, up from 418 the year before.
In fiscal year 2020, the Coast Guard only stopped 49 people from Cuba trying to reach Florida by boat — most often makeshift, barely seaworthy vessels. That number spiked to 838 last year. And, since October, Coast Guard crews already stopped 557 Cubans making the dangerous journey across the Florida Straits.
In the Florida Keys, a frequent destination of Cuban migrants, three overloaded sailboats packed with Haitian migrants arrived on three separate occasions between November and January in almost the exact same location off a remote highway in Key Largo.
It’s not just South Florida seeing its shores as a landing spot for the migrants. Earlier this week, dozens of Haitians arrived on a rustic vessel on the beach of Rincón, Puerto Rico.
And, last Friday, the Coast Guard intercepted 88 Haitians near the Bahamas and returned them to Haiti. Another 191 Haitians aboard an overloaded sailboat were stopped at sea Tuesday about 40 miles southwest of Great Inagua in the southern Bahamas.
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(Herald staff writers Jacqueline Charles and Syra Ortiz-Blanes contributed to this report.)
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