Two arrested after migrant smuggling operation busted in Surfside, court records show
.jpg "Two men are in federal custody after they were caught on a boat that dropped off an unknown number of migrants on a beach in Surfside Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024.")
Two men are in federal custody in connection to a migrant smuggling incident that happened on a Surfside beach last week, according to court documents.
On Wednesday, a boat dropped off a group of people on the beach around 8 p.m., and then headed back out to sea, Homeland Security Investigations agents said in their criminal complaint.
It’s still not known how many people were disembarked and if any of those people were caught. But police from several agencies searched for them on land in Surfside, Haulover Beach and Bal Harbour and from boats and helicopters, Surfside police said in a statement released that night on X.
When asked whether anyone had been caught on land, a Homeland Securities Investigations spokesman said Tuesday that the case remains under investigation.
The boat, which the U.S. Coast Guard tracked after it left the Bahamas, was stopped by Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations agents as it was traveling back east, according to the criminal complaint, filed Friday in U.S. Southern District Court.
At first, the complaint states the driver of the boat, whom agents said is 27-year-old Antonio Daniel Laing, wouldn’t stop the vessel for pursuing Customs agents. He didn’t stop until after agents fired warning shots toward the boat, according to the complaint.
Another man, Ethan Sullivan, 32, was also on the boat, agents say. He initially told them his name was Luke Wilson, but they learned his real identity once he was taken into Coast Guard custody, the complaint states.
Both men were arrested on charges of re-entering the country having already been ordered removed. According to the complaint against Sullivan, he was ordered removed back to the United Kingdom in March 2020. Laing was ordered removed back to his country, the Bahamas, in September.
Laing is being represented by a federal public defender, who declined to comment on the case. According to court documents, Sullivan said he was seeking private counsel, but an attorney for him has not been listed.
Both men have a pre-trial detention hearing scheduled for Thursday in Miami federal court.
