How are migrants traveling to South Florida? The pictures of their boats tell the story
Boats barely seaworthy and often homemade — many still just offshore, beached or wedged into the mangroves of the Keys — serve as floating monuments to the desperation of Cubans and Haitians escaping their homeland for South Florida.
Whether sailing the Mona Passage between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, the Windward Passage between Hispaniola and Cuba, or the Florida Straits between Cuba and South Florida, thousands of migrants have faced treacherous seas on vessels most people wouldn’t venture beyond a neighborhood canal.
In Cuba and Haiti, people are escaping economic and political hardship. Haitians are also running away from what can be considered a war zone and humanitarian crisis.
Already volatile, conditions worsened there after July’s assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. Five weeks later, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the country’s southern peninsula, killing more than 2,000 people. Since then, gang violence has plagued the country, which, combined with ongoing political instability, has added to an already difficult task of improving security and providing assistance throughout much of the country.
What follows is the story of the dangerous journey for migrants looking for safety and freedom, told through the vessels they bravely sailed:
Journey from Haiti
▪ The U.S. Coast Guard and Border Patrol had been seeing an uptick in Haitian maritime migration for more than a year by the time they encountered the eerie sight of a sailboat packed with 61 migrants off a remote two-lane highway in northern Key Largo on Nov. 21, 2021. The landing near Card Sound Road was unusual because the area had been a common drop-off site for drug smugglers in the 1970s and ‘80s, but not for migrants, especially those from Haiti.
▪ It was the beginning of a trend of Haitian arrivals to the Keys that would continue through the winter. The next was a Christmas Eve landing in almost the same spot, this time with more than 50 people on board.
▪ The boats kept coming to the Keys, but the passenger load increased. On Jan. 10, 2022, a sailboat with 176 people on board arrived around the same area, but this time right off the property of the oceanfront gated community of the Ocean Reef Club.
▪ On Sunday, March 8, 2022, some of the most stunning images of migration seen in recent South Florida memory emerged from a massive landing, again off the Ocean Reef Club, when 356 people from Haiti arrived in a large wooden boat. After it hit shallow water and grounded, almost half of its occupants jumped ship and swam to Ocean Reef’s docks.
▪ The Keys were once again the destination of Haitian migrants on Monday, March 14, 2022, but this time they landed on an island about 70 miles farther down the archipelago. They arrived on a sailboat before wading through the shallows to the shore of a neighborhood on Summerland Key.
Journey from Cuba
While Cuba isn’t experiencing the same levels of violence as Haiti, the political and economic environment has become unbearable enough that more people have risked their lives taking to the seas to get away than at any other time in more than five years. And the migrant surge is happening despite the 2017 end of the U.S. wet-foot, dry-foot policy that allowed Cubans who made it to shore to stay and apply for permanent residency after a year.
Many of the vessels Cubans are using to get to South Florida don’t look seaworthy enough to survive a trip across a pond, let alone the perilous one Florida Straits.
▪ Ten men made it across the Straits to the Middle Keys city of Marathon on Feb. 8, 2022, on this homemade craft that more resembles a bed than a boat.
▪ A group of migrants from Cuba was stopped by the Coast Guard off Key West in this raft on Jan. 7, 2022.
▪ This vessel has “SOS Cuba” written on the side. That was one of the rallying cries during last summer’s protests, both in Cuba and in South Florida, against increased oppression by the communist government.
▪ The Coast Guard said 16 people used this wooden boat to escape their homeland before being stopped in Boot Key Harbor in Marathon in September 2021.
▪ Fourteen people made it just offshore of Islamorada before being stopped by the Coast Guard in this homemade raft, also in September 2021.
▪ The Coast Guard intercepted this small boat packed with 11 Cuban migrants off the Keys on June 28, 2021.
▪ Authorities say seven people used this boat to float from Cuba to the Keys on Jan. 12, 2021.
▪ The U.S. Border Patrol says seven men from Cuba came ashore in Marathon in this small wooden boat on Sept. 28, 2021.
▪ The Border Patrol said 18 Cuban migrants arrived in this raft on the beach in Marathon Nov. 29, 2021.
▪ On March 29, 2022, this blue boat was beached in the mangroves of Conch Key in the Middle Keys. The boat was powered by a diesel engine mounted in the center of its hull. The Border Patrol said 29 Cuban migrants sailed on the homemade craft.
This story has been updated to reflect the correct number of Haitian migrants — 356 people — who arrived March 8, 2022, off north Key Largo.
This story was originally published March 17, 2022 at 11:19 AM.
