There was food and drink on board, but it had been tossed into a forward compartment and were "covered in oil and water," according to the ICE documents. There were only 10 life jackets, and those were "in an unusable condition, tied together in knots or damaged." Sometimes it's impossible to know," Diaz said.įor example, in the October 2004 case, the smugglers' boat was in poor condition, with cracks in the hull and other damage, according to an ICE affidavit filed in federal court. While there are no firm numbers available, Coast Guard officials say many migrants perish at sea aboard smugglers' boats that are usually not outfitted for safety. soil are generally allowed to stay under laws enacted to undermine the communist government of President Fidel Castro.īeyond the legal implications are safety concerns. shores are either released on bond or kept in detention pending a decision on whether they can stay. Migrants intercepted at sea are generally repatriated to their home countries. Of those, about 1,300 were Cubans, 1,300 were Haitians and the rest included Dominicans, Mexicans, Ecuadoreans and Chinese. Smugglers face up to three years minimum in prison if they are caught with more than 10 migrants, according to federal prosecutors.Īs of Wednesday, the Coast Guard had intercepted 5,700 migrants so far this year attempting to reach the United States by sea. The Coast Guard arrests six to eight groups of smugglers and migrants each month, many of them repeat offenders. Several dozen Ukrainians have been detained in recent months after attempting to sail from the Dominican Republican to South Florida.
Chinese can fly from Beijing to Moscow to Havana and hop on a go-fast boat to the United States, Woods said. Yet people keep coming from all over the world. To date, he said, there has been no evidence of a terrorist connection. 11, 2001, federal authorities have been concerned that al-Qaida might attempt to use these established smuggling rings to insert operatives in the United States. Woods said that since the terror attacks of Sept.
20 KNOTES TO MPS DRIVER
"The boat driver is the key to other components of the organization.
"There are a lot of different schemes and you need a lot of people in a network to do that," Woods said. He said undercover ICE investigations have resulted in 75 convictions of such organizations in the past two years. Robert Woods, assistant special agent in charge of U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami, said the "go-fast" boats are only part of the organized criminal enterprises that smuggle people into South Florida.
Although that group was caught in October 2004, many others likely get through. In one typical case, 15 Cuban migrants including four children used a homemade "chug-chug" vessel to reach an island in the Bahamas, where they were met by prearrangement by smugglers in a 29-foot boat with twin outboard engines that was able to reach speeds of 35 knots. On the east coast, at least four separate groups of migrants have landed in the past three months north of Palm Beach, including some people from China.
In the past few months, authorities in Collier and Lee counties on Florida's southwest coast have seized seven boats involved in smuggling operations, some of them carrying drums of fuel and other supplies required for the longer trip from Cuba. Refugees from Cuba, Haiti and other countries are just another way smugglers can make money, authorities say. South Florida has long been a destination for smugglers from the Caribbean and Latin America, from the rumrunners of the 1930s to the drug traffickers of the 1980s. "They look for areas that are not as populated," said Coast Guard spokesman Luis Diaz. "We're certainly seeing an increase in human smuggling."Īnd the smugglers are often avoiding the more heavily patrolled areas such as the Florida Keys and bringing their cargos of people, usually paying $8,000 to $10,000 a head, to more remote locales farther up the coast. "You're far more likely to make it to land on a fast boat than on a raft," said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. officials are increasingly confronted with profit-seeking human smugglers using sophisticated speedboats to bring Cubans, Haitians and even Chinese to Florida. MIAMI (AP) - Instead of refugees on rickety rafts and aging boats, U.S. Human smugglers trying new tactics to evade U.S.
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