A total of 17 people, including at least 13 Haitian immigrants and a U.S. citizen, were arrested last Friday after reaching the coast of Dania Beach town, north of Miami, Florida, in two boats, the Office of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported. ).
Tourists and residents of Dania Beach told television outlets that they saw the two boats arriving with people running out as soon as they came ashore.
Several of them were detained amid the chaos at a marina attended by reinforcements from federal immigration services and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, witnesses told the press.
The Border Patrol said on his Twitter account that the American, whom he did not identify, was in charge of the human trafficking and that the two ships had been seized.
The CPB has not indicated whether there are still escaped immigrants.
The shores of South Florida usually arrive in rudimentary Caribbean boats, mostly Cubans, Haitians, and Bahamians, risking the dangers of the sea.
Last week, the Coast Guard rescued three Cuban nationals stranded on a desert island in the Bahamas for more than a month after being shipwrecked.
That agency has also spent the past few days searching for about ten Cubans and six Jamaicans, who were traveling in two ships that were shipwrecked off the Florida Keys, in the south of the state, and in Fort Pierce, about 136 miles north of Miami. .
The Coast Guard found the boat the ten Cubans were traveling on Sunday about 12 kilometers south of Long Key, with no trace of the immigrants.
Meanwhile, this week the agency suspended the search for the boat with the six Jamaicans who had left Bimini, Bahamas, and who were reported missing after their boat capsized off the coast of Fort Pierce.
The search had begun last Friday when a skipper rescued a Jamaican who said six others were with him when his 5.4-meter boat capsized off the Atlantic coast of Florida on Feb. 10.