U.S. Coast Guard stops overloaded sailboat with 132 Haitian migrants near the Bahamas
In what’s turning into an almost daily occurrence, the U.S. Coast Guard on Sunday stopped an overloaded sailboat at sea packed with 132 people from Haiti attempting to flee from the deteriorating security, political and economic conditions within their homeland.
The Coast Guard intercepted what it refers to as a “sail freighter” about 95 miles southwest of Andros Island in the Bahamas, the agency said in a statement released Monday afternoon on Twitter.
For the past two weeks, the Coast Guard has stopped similar boats between Haiti and South Florida, each with dozens of people dangerously stowed on and below the decks of vessels of questionable seaworthiness.
The Coast Guard said last week that more Haitians have taken to the seas since Oct. 1 than at any other time in the past 18 years.
Additionally, the Coast Guard and Border Patrol are dealing with a similar surge in Cuban maritime migration. Since Sunday, the U.S. Border Patrol took into custody 33 Cuban migrants who made landfall at three separate locations throughout the Florida Keys.
Cubans migrating to South Florida has hit a five-year high. Experts on the communist country also point to an ever-worsening political and economic climate as the driving factor behind the surge.
Compounding their plight, almost all of the people from Haiti and Cuba that the Coast Guard interdicts at sea are returned home days later.
The Coast Guard on Friday took 109 people back to the island nation who were stopped off the southeastern coast of Cuba in the Windward Passage on Wednesday.
Also on Friday, the Coast Guard handed over a group of 67 Haitians to the Royal Bahamian Defense Force. They were stopped at sea off Anguilla Cay, a Bahamian island just north of Cuba.
Last Tuesday, 89 migrants were taken back to Haiti aboard a Coast Guard cutter. Those people were stopped four days earlier, also sailing through the Windward Passage, according to the Coast Guard.
This story was originally published April 18, 2022 at 8:18 PM.
