Coast Guard blocks batch of Cuban migrants headed for US — then ships them back home
The US Coast Guard intercepted nearly two dozen Cuban migrants trying to reach the US shore on rickety boats in four separate operations – and shipped them back home, authorities said.
The seafaring migrants were nabbed as part of Operation Vigilant Security, a stepped-up effort with Homeland Security to stop asylum seekers from making it into the country illegally, the Coast Guard said in a press release this week.
“There are consequences for trying to enter the US unlawfully,” Lt. Commander John Beal of the Coast Guard’s District Seven said in a statement Monday.
“Those who attempt to bypass the safe, orderly and lawful immigration pathways may be disqualified from future opportunities to come to the United States and may further be presumed ineligible for asylum, subject to a five-year bar on future admission and will potentially face criminal prosecution,” Beal said. “Don’t take to the sea.”
All of the migrants seized were repatriated back to Cuba on Monday, officials said.
The first group of three Cuban nationals were rescued in the Gulf of Mexico by a merchant ship, which notified authorities and turned them over to the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Oak.
A second boat with a single migrant on board was spotted about 12 miles off the coast of Boot Key by a good Samaritan and was also picked up by the same cutter.
In the third case a Coast Guard airplane eyed six Cubans “waving their arms in distress” about 25 miles outside of Jensen Beach, Florida, and dispatched the Cutter William Sparling to intercept them.
The weary migrants told authorities they had been at sea for six days and ran out of fuel.
The final incident came when a group of 10 migrants were rescued from the waters just four miles south of Marathon, Florida, and were also picked up by the Coast Guard Cutter Oak.
The Coast Guard warns that traversing the high seas around the US poses a grave risk.
In addition to Cubans fleeing the restrictive island nation, the Coast Guard routinely intercepts migrants trying to reach the US from other countries — including more than 300 from Haiti and the Bahamas who were repatriated back home earlier this month.
In April, three suspected gangbangers wanted for a fatal 2020 shooting in Puerto Rico were plucked off of a ship headed for the US – and turned over to authorities in the Dominican Republic.
