Feds stop another boat smuggling Chinese migrants from the Bahamas to South Florida
Federal agents stopped a boat Sunday morning heading from the Bahamas to South Florida carrying migrants from several countries, mostly from China, according to a criminal complaint.
The interception of the boat is the latest in a series of recent migrant smuggling cases disrupted involving people from China attempting to enter South Florida using the Bahamas as a jumping-off point.
READ MORE: Chinese migrants picked up in Gables were headed to Orlando, man tells feds. Boat found
This boat, a 25-foot vessel, was being tracked by a U.S. Coast Guard cutter crew as it left Bimini in the Bahamas early in the morning Sunday.
The vessel’s operator at first turned on its navigational lights, but switched them off the farther he traveled away from Bimini, according to the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations complaint filed Wednesday.
As the vessel entered U.S. waters, a Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations patrol boat crew turned on its flashing lights and sirens to signal the smugglers to pull over, according to the complaint. When they didn’t, the agents fired several warning shots over the vessel’s bow, the complaint states.
Agents then fired into the engines, which stopped the boat at around 6:45 a.m., according to the complaint.
On board, agents found 22 people — two at the helm, and the rest migrants. According to the complaint, 12 people were from China, seven from Haiti and one from Jamaica.
Agents arrested Demetrius Luciano Kemp, from the Bahamas, and Mikewendzly Nestar Norelus, who is from Haiti, according to the report.
READ MORE: Cuban smuggler promised $5K, then caught with over 20 Chinese migrants in Miami: feds
According to the complaint, both men were at the helm at various times along the journey. Kemp drove the boat out of the Bahamas, but Norelus was operating the vessel when the Customs crew intercepted them — that is until the shots were fired, when Kemp grabbed the wheel, according to the complaint.
Norelus told agents he traveled from Haiti to the Bahamas before embarking for South Florida, the complaint states. Kemp told agents he was approached by the organizers of a smuggling operation to take the migrants to the U.S., according to the complaint.
He told them he was paid $2,000 up front, and expected additional payment when he returned to Bimini, the complaint states.
Kemp told agents that he had no specific destination to drop the migrants off when he arrived in Florida, and he planned to take them to “anywhere he could, whether at a beach or an inlet,” agents stated in the complaint.
Agents ran Kemp’s records and discovered he had previously been deported last July after being found clinging to the hull of a capsized boat about 11 nautical miles offshore of the U.S. a month earlier.
READ MORE: Migrant boat carrying Chinese, Ecuadorians stopped same day of Gables smuggling bust
He told Border Patrol agents that his fishing boat departed from the Bahamas and overturned and drifted toward South Florida. But agents conducted a radar analysis and found he left Boynton Inlet in Palm Beach County earlier in the day and was heading to the Bahamas when his vessel broke down, according to the complaint.
Kemp faces a charge of encouraging or inducing aliens to enter the U.S. and another charge of reentry of a removed alien. He and Norelus both face a charge of failing to heave (stop the boat when ordered to do so by law enforcement), according to court documents.
This story was originally published February 12, 2025 at 7:55 PM.
