179 Haitian migrants stopped in overloaded sailboat off the Bahamas
The U.S. Coast Guard stopped an overloaded sailboat with nearly 180 people crammed on its deck off the Bahamas Sunday night.
The 179 people were first sighted by a Coast Guard air crew around 11 p.m. sailing about 30 miles off Andros Island, the agency said.
Two cutters, the Confidence and the Harriet Lane, stopped the vessel and took the people on board. The Coast Guard said they were transferred to the custody of the Royal Bahamian Defense Force on Tuesday.
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 on their current trajectory, 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 993 Haitian migrants headed to Florida, compared to 1,527 in all of fiscal year 2021. In fiscal year 2020, the Coast Guard only encountered 418 people from Haiti at sea.
The Coast Guard is also seeing a surge in Cuban migrants on the Florida Straits, the most since fiscal year 2017. Experts point to deteriorating economic and political conditions within both nations.
Sunday’s stop also continues a trend of Haitians boarding overloaded sailboats as a migration means. In January, a group of 176 people were stopped near the exclusive gated north Key Largo community of Ocean Reef.
On Christmas Eve, the Border Patrol took 52 people from Haiti into custody after their sailboat arrived off a remote two-lane highway near Ocean Reef called Card Sound Road. In November, 63 Haitian migrants also arrived on a sailboat in almost the same location off Card Sound Road.
The Coast Guard Tuesday issued a statement urging migrants from both Cuba and Haiti not to risk their lives trying to migrate to the States on such journeys. Not only is it extremely dangerous, migrants are likely to be returned to their homelands if caught.
“The probability of a successful migration voyage is low, and when these voyages are stopped, people should expect to be returned to their country of origin,” Lt. Vladimir Jimenez, law enforcement duty officer with the Seventh Coast Guard District command center, said.
This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 4:56 PM.
