Coast Guard stops another overloaded sailboat with 123 Haitian migrants on board
For the second time in a week, the U.S. Coast Guard on Friday stopped an overloaded sailboat packed with people migrating from Haiti.
This time, the vessel was stopped about 10 miles off Anguilla Cay, a Bahamian island just north of Cuba. The Coast Guard said 123 people were on board. The exact size of the boat was not immediately known, but judging by footage released by the Coast Guard, the number of people on board far exceeded the vessel’s capacity.
The interdiction comes six days after the Coast Guard stopped a sailboat with 179 people from Haiti 30 miles off Andros Island, also in the Bahamas.
The federal government tracks maritime migration by the fiscal year, beginning and ending Oct. 1. If the numbers of Haitian migrants stopped at sea continue at the current rate, fiscal year 2022 will surpass last fiscal year, which saw the most people interdicted by the Coast Guard since FY 2019.
Since October, the Coast Guard stopped 1,116 Haitian migrants likely headed to Florida, compared with 1,527 in all of fiscal year 2021. In fiscal year 2020, the Coast Guard only encountered 418 people from Haiti at sea.
Friday’s incident is also part of a trend in which Haitian migrants are overloading on to sailboats to make the dangerous maritime journey. Several of these vessels have arrived off the coast of Key Largo in the Upper Keys since November.
In January, 176 people were stopped near the exclusive gated north Key Largo community of Ocean Reef.
On Christmas Eve, Border Patrol agents took 52 people from Haiti into custody after they arrived by sailboat off a remote two-lane highway that leads to Ocean Reef called Card Sound Road.
That landing came after 63 Haitian migrants landed in almost the same location on Card Sound Road, again in an overloaded sailboat.
This story was originally published March 4, 2022 at 7:44 PM with the headline "Coast Guard stops another overloaded sailboat with 123 Haitian migrants on board."
