MIAMI — Border Patrol agents in the Florida Keys are responding to almost nonstop migrant landings this week that continued through Tuesday morning.
On Monday, the federal agency reported that arrivals in South Florida are up five times what they were this time last year.
“Agents are responding to multiple migrant landings throughout the Keys this morning,” Adam Hofffner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s division chief of Miami operations told the Miami Herald/FLKeysnews.com on Tuesday.
On Sunday, almost 80 people from Cuba arrived aboard homemade vessels in four separate landings, the Border Patrol said in a statement. There were also several landings Monday, and several interceptions at sea offshore of the Keys by U.S. Coast Guard crews.
Since Oct. 1, the beginning of the fiscal year, the Border Patrol took custody of about 2,350 migrants, mostly from Cuba, who made landfall in South Florida, mostly in the Keys. During the same time frame last year, that number was just under 500 people.
The constant landings are taxing local resources in the Keys, according to Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay. The county’s morgue has several unclaimed bodies believed to be people from Cuba who died trying to make the dangerous maritime journey to a better life. And migrant boats — most floating testimonies of ingenuity — litter the mangroves and coastlines of the archipelago.
On Sunday, the Carnival Cruise Line ship Mardi Gras passed a migrant boat at sea as it sailed south of Key West. The crew stopped the ship to check on the makeshift craft, “as is standard maritime practice,” but no one was on board, said Matt Lupoli, a Carnival spokesman, told the Herald.
The ship then resumed course, “with the remainder of its week-long cruise schedule unaffected,” Lupoli said.
The number of Cuban migrants the Coast Guard intercepts at sea along the Florida Straits is set to be three times higher this fiscal year if the rate so far keeps up. The latest from the agency is that it’s stopped 2,982 people from Cuba trying to reach South Florida since the beginning of October.
From Oct. 1, 2021, to the end of September, the Coast Guard said it intercepted 6,182 Cubans at sea, a number that was already the highest in almost a decade.
The Keys are also increasingly becoming a frequent destination for Haitian migrants escaping escalating gang violence and political and economic instability. Unlike Cuban migrants, who’ve been coming almost daily in smaller vessels, months tend to go by without the arrival of a Haitian migrant group. But when they do arrive, they’re on overloaded vessels, sometimes with well over 100 people on board.
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