Nearly 70 Haitian migrants were picked up in Virginia Key
The Coast Guard returned to the island on Thursday another 177 Cuban migrants caught at sea off Florida, while a group of about two dozen Haitians washed ashore in Miami.
According to a Coast Guard news release, all of the Cuban migrants were intercepted separately off the coast earlier this month. Two of them were repatriated by the Coast Guard.
Twenty-five Haitians traveling by boat from Port-de-Paix, Haiti, washed ashore on Virginia Key, a small island southeast of downtown Miami, and were apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, agency spokesman Michael Selva said.
Good Samaritans among the island’s beachgoers helped some of the migrants ashore in small boats and jet skis, Selva said.
@Update crews still rescuing people from vessel off Virginia Key. Our land partners are with people who have left the vessel and gone into the water to swim to shore.
Avoid the area for the safety of responding aircraft, vessels and ground crews. pic.twitter.com/uVUx1nLSMh
Emergency responders told CBS Miami that the Haitian migrants appeared shaken. They were given blankets, food and water.
“Life is the number one priority right now. Making sure everyone is OK, they’re OK and they’re in good health,” Silva said.
Dozens of additional migrants still aboard the vessel have been processed by federal officials at sea, which usually means they are returned to their home countries.
“I was on the water at Virginia Key and all I could see was a bunch of boats and the Coast Guard around him,” one witness told CBS Miami. “There’s been a lot going on, so it’s a crisis, so it’s kind of hard for everybody. For me, as an immigrant, it really hurts.”
Increasing numbers of Cuban and Haitian migrants have attempted the perilous crossing of the Florida Straits to illegally enter the Keys Island chain and other parts of the country in recent months as inflation rises and economic conditions in their homelands worsen.
The jump among Cubans was particularly pronounced. As of Oct. 1, 2022, the Coast Guard has intercepted more than 4,900 Cuban migrants at sea, compared to more than 6,100 Cubans intercepted in the entire 2022 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to a news release.
The latest returns and landings come just after President Joe Biden’s administration began a new policy of turning back Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans at the Texas border, along with Venezuelans who arrive illegally.
The administration also offers humanitarian parole to up to 30,000 people a month from those four countries if they apply online, pay their airfare and find a financial sponsor.
Migrants who arrive illegally and do not immediately return home will no longer be eligible for new parole. U.S. officials hope it will discourage arrivals by sea by offering a safer alternative and path to permanent residency.
The U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, recently resumed processing migrant visas and announced Wednesday that some of the first Cuban applicants had already been accepted under the new parole. In Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, would-be applicants have flocked to immigration offices in recent days to apply for passports needed for the U.S. program.
Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Mark Cobb said in a statement that with the new legal routes available to migrants, “we urge all people to use the safe and legal means available to travel to the United States. Do not risk your life by going to sea, when you don’t have to.”
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