Thread: U.S. Coast Guard sends back to Haiti nearly 200 migrants rescued at sea

U.S. Coast Guard sends back to Haiti nearly 200 migrants rescued at sea







Gerard Maxineau/For the Miami Herald






Syra Ortiz-Blanes
Wed, March 23, 2022, 2:45 PM






Nearly 200 migrants were returned to Haiti on Tuesday after being picked up near the Caribbean nation’s coastline, the U.S. Coast Guard said.




The repatriation is the latest intervention U.S. border authorities in South Florida have carried out as thousands of Haitians and Cubans take to the sea to escape their home countries in turmoil.

On Saturday, the Coast Guard announced on Twitter that two cutters had rescued the large group of Haitians on an overloaded boat in a flurry of bad weather. The group, which included 126 men, 45 women and 17 children, was found some 20 miles from Cape Du Mole, on Haiti’s northern coast.

Rear Adm. Brendan McPherson, from the Coast Guard office in Miami that patrols Florida, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, emphasized that the illegal voyages were “always dangerous” and “often deadly.”

“We have increased our air and sea patrols across the region in close coordination with our interagency and international partners,” he said in a statement.

Since Oct. 1, the U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted 2,284 Haitian migrants, an increase of almost 50 percent compared to the entire 2022 fiscal year, which runs from October to September. In that same period, it has interdicted 1,053 Cuban migrants, up from the 838 in fiscal 2021.

In recent months, the Florida Keys have been a principal landing spot for Cuban and Haitian migrants, many smuggled by human traffickers. On March 14, more than 100 Haitian migrants arrived in a residential area in Summerland Key, near Key West.

The landing followed another a week before that brought 356 Haitian migrants to Key Largo. On Monday, the Border Patrol said it had apprehended about two dozen other migrants, including two groups of Cuban migrants that landed near the Marquesas Keys and Big Pine Key.

Third group of migrants in a week lands in the Keys near Islamorada

The surge of migrants has also affected Puerto Rico, which is seeing more and more Haitian migrants landing on its shores. As of mid-March, U.S. Customs and Border Protection had apprehended 571 Haitian migrants in Puerto Rico — the top nationality to be intercepted in the American territory by border agents this fiscal year, and surpassing migrant arrivals from the Dominican Republic.

The majority have landed on Mona Island, a Puerto Rican nature reserve between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, the landmass shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti; 188 Haitians have made landfall on mainland Puerto Rico, in the western towns of Aguada, Añasco, Rincón, and Cabo Rojo.

Marleine Bastien, a Haitian advocate and founder of Family Action Network Movement in Miami, said the Biden administration should end deportations to Haiti, as the nation faces gang violence, political instability and destruction from earthquakes.

“It is human nature to try to find security,” she told the Miami Herald. “Haiti is a country at war right now.”


https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/week...163400620.html

They are all coming here illegally, no matter where they came from.

Stop picking and choosing who to let in, EXPEL 100% of them.

We are not the dumping ground for every country on the planet.

Dominican Republic is building a WALL to keep them out, USA does not want them either!