More than 30 Cuban migrants arrive in three Florida Keys landings

David Goodhue
·2 min read
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A total of 32 people from Cuba arrived Wednesday in the Florida Keys who the Border Patrol says were trying to migrate to the United States.

Two of the landings were in Key West, and the other in the Middle Keys city of Marathon, said Adam Hoffner, division chief of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Miami operations.

“The migrants will be interviewed and processed for removal proceedings,” Hoffner said in a statement.

All of the people arrived in “rustic vessels,” Hoffner said, meaning homemade, barely-seaworthy boats commonly used by those migrating from Cuba to South Florida.

A Cuban migrant boat floats in the shallow waters off the Florida Keys Wednesday, May 25, 2022.
A Cuban migrant boat floats in the shallow waters off the Florida Keys Wednesday, May 25, 2022.

Border Patrol agents detained 12 Cuban men in Marathon around 4 a.m., Hoffner said. They told agents they departed from the Matanzas region of Cuba, Hoffner said.

The first group of migrants agents found in Key West consisted of five men who landed around 6:30 a.m., according to the Border Patrol.

Around 9:45 a.m., agents found 15 men and one woman from Cuba on Smathers Beach in the Southernmost city.

The Border Patrol, Coast Guard and U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations are dealing with the largest maritime exodus from Cuba and Haiti to South Florida in years — in over two decades for Haitians and more than six years for Cubans.

The Coast Guard said it’s apprehended more than 5,000 people from Haiti and over 1,950 from Cuba at sea leaving their homelands since October.

The biggest wave of Cuban migrants arriving in U.S. since 1980 is driving policy changes

Even more Cuban migrants are finding their way to the United States through the U.S.-Mexico border. From October through April, 114,916 Cubans have come across the border. Combined with people coming across the Florida Straits, this is the largest migration wave from Cuba since the Mariel boatlift of 1980.

On Tuesday, a cargo ship with more than 800 people grounded in Cuban waters that officials say was on its way to the Florida Keys. If the vessel had successfully made its journey, that would have been the largest migrant landing in the United States in decades.

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Also on Tuesday, the Coast Guard stopped a sailboat carrying 153 Haitian migrants about 45 miles southeast of Islamorada in the Florida Keys.