MIAMI — Federal agents say a man borrowed his friend’s boat on Jan. 21 and used it to pick up 27 migrants from Cuba to bring them back to the United States.
But Julio Borges Barrero, 31, was stopped about 11 nautical miles southeast of Marathon in the Middle Florida Keys around 4:30 a.m. two days later by a Coast Guard patrol.
On board the 28-foot Proline center console boat were 27 people from Cuba, according to a complaint filed Thursday by an agent with Homeland Security Investigations.
The Coast Guard transferred Borges Barrero to HSI custody, where he faces migrant smuggling charges.
His arrest comes as South Florida is experiencing a surge in maritime migration from countries such as Cuba and Haiti.
And Borges Barrero’s arrest is on the heels of a tragedy off Fort Pierce Inlet earlier in the week where 39 migrants from a still-not-named country are presumed to be dead after their boat capsized on its way to Florida from the Bahamas.
Authorities are investigating that incident as a human smuggling case.
The day after the arrest, agents interviewed the owner of the boat. He told them he loaned it to Borges Barrero, who said he was going to use it to go fishing in the Keys. He left Jan. 21 from Black Point Marina in Homestead.
The owner told agents he did not hear from Borges Barrero for two days, and he called the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office in the Keys Sunday night to report him missing, according to the HSI complaint.
After his arrest, Borges Barrero told agents he left for Cuba after receiving a phone call from his father-in-law, who lives in Cuba, to pick up him and several other people and take them to Florida.
Borges Barrero picked up the 18 men and nine women in Cuba and stopped in Cay Sal in the Bahamas to rest before heading to the Keys, he told agents.
Agents searching the boat found five mostly empty fuel tanks on board, the complaint states.
The Coast Guard on Tuesday stopped another boat off the Keys that it said was also being driven by a human smuggler. This time it was 13 people, and the vessel was stopped about 10 miles south of Long Key, the agency said in a press release Friday.
The person driving the boat was transferred to HSI custody, the Coast Guard said. Court records for that case were not immediately available.
The Coast Guard and other agencies have been urging would-be migrants recently to not risk their lives by taking to the seas for an often-dangerous journey across the Florida Straits. And, they stress to those determined to make the trek not to pay human smugglers to help them.
“People illegally entering the U.S. using smugglers put their lives in the hands of criminals,” Lt. Cmdr. Mark Cobb, Coast Guard District Seven duty enforcement officer, said in a statement. “Migrant smugglers are ruthless criminals who only care about profit.”
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