Thread: FL: 13 arrested in raid at air station

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/ ... -news-sfla

13 arrested in raid at air station

staff report
Posted January 26 2007

Federal, state and local authorities have arrested 13 people at the Key West naval air station and escorted 120 employees off the base after an investigation into improper personnel.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said the operation, conducted Wednesday, netted two Mexican immigrants with fraudulent green cards. Officials matched two other workers to state arrest warrants and police are holding nine others, here legally, on charges of using fraudulent identification.

LocalLinks
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, immigration agents have arrested more than 1,100 unauthorized immigrant workers at U.S. commercial airports, obtaining 775 criminal indictments.

Security does seem that good there as 15 Cubans landed on that base recently.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/ne ... 548637.htm

Posted on Fri, Jan. 26, 2007
KEY WEST
Cuban migrants land on Key West naval propertyA Navy commander in Key West discovered 15 Cuban migrants in his yard this week.
BY CAMMY CLARK
cclark@MiamiHerald.com
KEY WEST - The U.S. Navy's new top commander in Key West got up one morning this week to a front-door taste of life in South Florida: Calmly sitting in his yard near a hedge were 15 Cuban migrants, fresh off a crossing of the Florida Straits in a rickety homemade boat.

An off-duty officer, jogging in the predawn darkness, spotted the group around 5:30 a.m. Wednesday and knocked on the front door belonging to Capt. James R. Brown of the Key West Naval Air Station.

'He said, `Hey, skipper, I need your help,' '' Brown said Thursday. ``I grabbed my phone and shouted to my wife, Lorie, that we had extra guests in our front yard. . . . What a sight to behold. Fifteen people were sitting calmly, sipping the little water they had left.''

Four of the migrants had gone for help and eventually returned to the group, sitting under a streetlight so they could be found, Brown said.

Under the United States government's ''wet-foot/dry-foot'' policy, the Cubans -- 12 men, five women and two children -- are almost certain to be allowed to stay because they reached U.S. soil.

Brown lives on military property at Truman Annex, near the big tourist buoy that marks the southernmost spot in the continental United States, only 90 miles from Cuba.

Brown said he cannot discuss the security measures in place around the Navy's property, although he did say there are markers along the shore that say: ``Do Not Enter. Military property.''

''But the Cubans land apparently just about anywhere,'' he said, adding that migrants have previously come ashore on military property in Key West. ``Statistically, it's going to happen.''

The site of the Cubans' landing this week also is only about a mile from the Coast Guard base in Key West and even closer to a Virginia-based Coast Guard cutter that was docked at Truman Annex to unload $57 million of cocaine seized from a Honduras fishing vessel.

`ROBUST PRESENCE'

Although the Key West Coast Guard station is without eight 123-foot patrol boats that were dry-docked indefinitely last month to fix structural problems, there is still a ''robust and aggressive'' presence in the Florida Straits, said Coast Guard spokesman Chris O'Neil.

'We're out there, but it's a big ocean and you can't throw a wall around the maritime border and seal it off and say `We have 100 percent protection,' '' O'Neil said. 'It's not achievable.' ''

Coast Guard Capt. Scott A. Buschman, the Key West area commander, said he is getting needed resources from other areas of the Coast Guard to make up for the loss of the patrol boats.

He said the Coast Guard also will soon implement a plan called ''multi-crewing,'' in which 110-foot patrol boats will be operated about twice as many hours on the seas -- using two crews and a revamped maintenance plan.

PLANNING AHEAD

Shortly after he took command in Key West in July, Brown said, he reviewed a number of contingency plans. Among them was this: ``Let's pretend I wake up one morning and find extra guests in my yard. What do we do?''

The plan worked well Wednesday, Brown said, with teams from the Navy's base security and the Key West police and fire departments responding. Brown said his first concern was for the health of the migrants, especially two very young children.

Brown said all seemed fine ``but appeared very thankful they were out of that rocky boat.''

The migrants were given food, and the children also got stuffed animals. They all were taken to the Monroe County Detention Center, where they were processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.