The United States Coast Guard (USCG) returned 19 Cuban rafters who spent several days adrift before being intercepted near the coast of Florida.
According to an official note from the Ministry of the Interior (Minint), the group left Cuba illegally and spent nine days adrift in the Straits of Florida before being sighted by US authorities.
The group consisted of 17 men and two women, who had left the coast of the municipality of Cárdenas, in the province of Matanzas.
They used a mixed sail and motor vessel, but experienced terrible weather conditions that made it impossible to complete their journey to Florida. While they were lucky enough to be rescued by a USCG vessel, they ended up being repatriated back to the Island from which they tried to escape.
According to a Minint statement shared on social networks, this is the 29th repatriation operation carried out by a neighboring country since 2024 began.
These operations are usually carried out by the United States, Mexico, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas, which, in total, have returned 374 citizens back to the Greater Antilles.
A total of 19 Cuban citizens were returned to the country this Friday morning through the Port of Orozco, Bahía Honda, Artemisa. This is the twenty-ninth operation to return irregular migrants from different countries in the region with 374 people returned. #Cuba pic.twitter.com/2mG3SKljE7
— MININT_CUBA (@minint_cuba) April 19, 2024
Balseros sighted near Florida
While the number of Cuban rafters trying to reach the United States has seen a decrease since the program began Parole Humanitarian in January 2023, it never completely stopped, so authorities continued to report the interception and repatriation of several groups of rafters during recent months.
One of the cases that went viral in recent weeks was that of a group of Cuban fishermen who sighted a boat coming from the Island. They, unable to take them on board due to US laws, They just gave them directions and shouted words of encouragement.
Days later, the fisherman who recorded the incident published a second video in which he revealed more details, noting that the next morning he walked along the coast of Key West to see if he could find the Cubans’ raft.
However, when he saw that the boat was not on the beach, he looked for news about it, discovering that the 16 Cubans had been intercepted shortly before landing and had already been returned to the Island.
#Coast #Guard #repatriated #Cuban #rafters
