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The US Coast Guard ended a search on Friday, January 28 to try to find survivors following the sinking of a migrant boat off Florida. On the same day, another migrant boat capsized off the coast of Puerto Rico with twenty people on board trying to get to the United States.
The ship that made shipwreck off Florida had left a few days earlier from the Bahamas and at least 34 people are missing. These are routes that have already existed for several years, explains Olivier Teres, Americas specialist at the International Organization for Migration (IOM), but they evolve and change according to two factors.
« The first factor is the controls that are operated by the border security agencies, both from the Bahamas, but obviously from the United States, which operate and patrol these waters. And the second factor is linked to the climatic conditions, since obviously, according to the currents of bad weather, the smugglers avoid certain roads and certain routes. »
The sea route more dangerous than the land route
The climatic conditions make it difficult for the authorities to be able to identify all the irregular boats that pass through this area. And you should know that it is obviously much more complicated than by land, recalls Olivier Teres.
« The maritime conditions are always, de facto, much more complex to carry out controls, and more dangerous, as we have seen, unfortunately, with the last tragic incident and the loss of at least thirty-nine human lives. »
Flee an increasingly difficult situation in their country of origin
Migrants aboard these boats, often Haitians, are looking for new routes that are more and more popular, but also more and more perilous for join the United States.
« If we take the case, for example, of Haiti, the situation has deteriorated sharply over the past three years, explains Olivier Teres. And we can observe, indeed, that the rise in insecurity, the economic difficulties which are also linked in many countries to the effects linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, have indeed had direct repercussions on the most vulnerable groups. . »
These are phenomena that push migrants to seek better opportunities in other countries and especially in North America, for this region. The choice is sometimes directed towards smugglers, who actively promote their services, particularly on social networks, to facilitate irregular journeys, as is the case with this boat which failed.
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