Coast Guard sends 83 Cubans back home after stopping migrant boats

Palm Beach Post Staff
·2 min read
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This migrant vessel was stopped about 14 miles south of Duck Key on Monday. Its passengers were repatriated to Cuba on Saturday.
This migrant vessel was stopped about 14 miles south of Duck Key on Monday. Its passengers were repatriated to Cuba on Saturday.

KEY WEST — The U.S. Coast Guard returned 83 Cuban migrants to their home country Saturday after intercepting them earlier in the week aboard seven different, homespun vessels off the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas.

The Coast Guard's Southeast district announced the actions in a press release issued over its Twitter account Saturday.

Just after noon on Nov. 6, a Coast Guard air crew spotted a migrant boat about 50 miles south of Grassy Key, and about half an hour later, located another about 45 miles south of the key.

Read more: Evidence of increased migrant attempts to reach the U.S. washing ashore in Florida

Also: Venezuelans, Cubans, fleeing dictatorships, represent a new face of migrants at U.S.-Mexico border

Early that evening, an observer alerted the Coast Guard about a migrant vessel 20 miles south of the Dry Tortugas, and an hour later, a Coast Guard cutter saw another boat about 50 miles south of Marathon.

Three other migrant boats were intercepted Monday. A Coast Guard cutter spotted one about 7 miles south of Woman Key at around 7:15 a.m., while another one was seen by an outside observer about an hour later about 10 miles south of Lower Matecumbe Key.

A third boat with Cuban migrants was located by another observer just before 11 a.m. about 14 miles south of Duck Key.

The interdictions happened just days before Hurricane Nicole made landfall in Florida as a Category 1 storm.

“Thankfully, we rescued these people before the storm made the seas worse," Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Nicole Groll said in a statement posted to the district's Twitter account.

The Coast Guard Cutter Richard Etheridge repatriated the Cubans on Saturday, the Guard said.

"Seek safe and legal routes of coming to the U.S.," Lt. Connor Ives of Coast Guard District 7 said in the news release. "The Coast Guard, along with our partners, will continue to stop illegal migration at sea and return people to their country of origin or departure."

The Guard has interdicted 1,702 Cubans since Oct. 1, according to the news release. In the 2022 fiscal-year period, from Oct. 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2022, some 6,182 Cubans have been repatriated after being at sea off Florida's coast, the Guard said.

All migrants taken aboard Coast Guard ships receive food, water, shelter and medical attention, the agency says.

The repatriations to Cuba come at a time when the island’s independent activists and global human-rights organizations have denounced government repression and arbitrary arrests.

The Communist-led government “routinely relies on long and short-term arbitrary detention to harass and intimidate critics, independent activists, artists, protesters, and others,” according to Human Rights Watch. This summer, the rights group issued a report also detailing reports of “abuse-ridden prosecutions, and torture."

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Coast Guard sends 83 Cubans back home after stopping migrant boats