MIAMI — More than 100 Haitians landed Tuesday in a gated community in Key Largo, the latest boatload of refugees from the Caribbean to hit Florida’s shores.
The boat came from La Tortue, the island off the northwest coast of Haiti, a migrant told the Miami Herald before being whisked away by a federal agent.
Another migrant, 27-year-old Osli Cheriscar, told the Herald that the boat loaded in Môle-Saint-Nicolas, and they left on Friday. Môle-Saint-Nicolas is not far from Île de la Tortue along the northwest coast of Haiti.
“There are about 60 of us here on land,” he said, adding that he left Haiti because of “insecurity.” “The bandits are killing people, preventing us from living.”
The group was inside the Ocean Cay Drive gated community, where many of the homes are waterfront. The Haitian migrants included both men and women, but no children, federal agents said. They were moved in groups of about 12 at a time into vans operated by different federal agencies including U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
There have been so many migrants landings in the Florida Keys in recent days that on Tuesday, some Haitian migrants had to share a van with recently arrived Cuban refugees, who had also landed in the island-chain, near Islamorada, in another day in which multiple boats ferrying Cuban refugees landed.
Since Friday, more than 500 Cubans have arrived in the Florida Keys, overwhelming local and federal authorities. The large numbers of Cubans led to the National Park Service to announce Sunday that it would be temporarily closing the Dry Tortugas National Park in order to assist the migrants.
Both Cuba and Haiti have been at the center of worsening crises that have sent their nationals fleeing to the United States both by sea and by land.
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