Six groups of people from Cuba arrived in the Florida Keys over the weekend and Monday, according to the U.S. Border Patrol. In all, 58 people from Cuba arrived up and down the island chain in rustic vessels, said Adam Hoffner, division chief of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Miami operations.
Around 5 a.m. Monday, 15 people came ashore at the Southernmost Point landmark buoy in Key West aboard a homemade boat, Hoffner said. They told agents they left the Artemisa region of Cuba two days before.
Sunday brought four separate arrivals — 10 people on Sombrero Beach in the Middle Keys city of Marathon; 14 people in the Upper Keys Village of Islamorada, four people in Stock Island; and 12 people, including five children, on Smathers Beach in Key West, Hoffner said.
And, on Saturday, three men came ashore at Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park in Key West in a 10-foot homemade vessel, Hoffner said.
The arrivals of the six separate groups are part of an ongoing surge in maritime migration to South Florida from Cuba and Haiti. Since Oct. 1, the Border Patrol said 104 groups of migrants from both countries have come ashore in Florida.
And the Coast Guard said it has stopped 1,609 people at sea from Cuba since the beginning of October, the most interceptions of migrants from the communist nation the service has conducted in seven years.
On Saturday, the Coast Guard said it returned 75 people to Cuba who were caught at sea in three different stops between last Sunday and Tuesday.
On Monday, the Coast Guard said it turned over 62 people from Haiti to Bahamian authorities the agency said it stopped about 75 miles southeast of Key Largo a week ago.
The migrants were in an overloaded sailboat when first spotted by the crew of a Coast Guard HC-144 airplane, the agency said in a news release.
More Haitians are taking to the seas to flee economic, political and life-safety instability than they have in 14 years, the Coast Guard said. Since Oct. 1, crews have stopped 4,237 Haitians on the water.
