MIAMI — U.S. Border Patrol and Coast Guard crews were kept busy on Thanksgiving intercepting people from Cuba attempting to enter the country through the Florida Keys.
Throughout Thursday, the Border Patrol responded to three landings up and down the island chain. A total of 51 people from Cuba were taken into custody, Walter Slosar, chief patrol agent of the Border Patrol’s Miami sector, said in a statement released on Twitter.
The migrants arrived in homemade, rustic vessels, Slosar said.
Meanwhile, U.S. Coast Guard crews stopped several Cuban migrant vessels before they were able to reach land, the agency said.
On Twitter, the Coast Guard posted photos of several migrant vessel interceptions off Islamorada in the Upper Keys and off the Marquesas, an island group about 20 miles west of Key West.
This week also saw tragedy on the water as the ongoing exodus from Cuba and Haiti — with the Keys the most common destination — shows no sign of slowing.
Earlier in the week, six bodies of Cuban migrants were found in the ocean after their vessel capsized off Little Torch Keys over the weekend. The Coast Guard suspended its search for four other people, who are now presumed dead.
On Thursday, a man’s body was found floating about 150 miles offshore of Windley Key in the Upper Keys at almost the exact spot more than a dozen people from Haiti jumped into the ocean Monday night after their migrant sailboat grounded on a sandbar.
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