‘They were very grateful.’ 13 Cuban migrants were rescued at sea in the Keys recently
The U.S. Border Patrol helped rescue Cuban migrants left stranded near a group of islands about 20 miles off Key West after their homemade boat capsized.
“Thankfully, no injuries,” said the agency’s Chief Patrol Agent Walter N. Slosar, in a tweet posted Thursday afternoon.
Nine people were brought to safety. Their attempt to reach the United States in the increasingly common risky journey across the Florida Straits ended with their vessel overturning as they reached the shore at the Marquesas Keys, Border Patrol said.
“This is a dangerous journey by sea,” Slosar said.
The tweet did not include the time or day of the incident nor provide additional details. An email sent to a Border Patrol spokesman was not immediately returned on Thursday.
The rescue is yet another instance of the continuing influx of people leaving the island nation, which is plagued by deteriorating political and economic crises.
Earlier this month, four Cuban men were found floating in the water off the Upper Keys, saying they had been stranded at sea for eight days.
On Tuesday morning, two sets of migrants from Cuba arrived by boat in the Lower Keys. A group of 15 people — 10 men, four women and one child —made landfall in a homemade wooden boat within Fort Zachary Historic State Park in Key West at 8 a.m., Border Patrol said.
The other group, all men, landed at Ballast Key, a small island about eight miles west of Key West. There were “no medical concerns reported,” Border Patrol spokesman Adam Hoffner said of the two landings.
The day before, four Cuban men reached Key West aboard a small inflatable dinghy.
‘They were very grateful’
On May 6, another group of Cuban migrants were found floating in inner tubes off the Upper Keys.
A charter boat fishing crew spotted the four men about 30 miles off the coast of Islamorada. They were in the Gulf Stream in three rubber inner tubes that were tied together.
The men told a mate that they had been in the water for more than a week.
Mike Diaz, 27, the mate of Takedown Charters, speaks fluent Spanish and spoke to the men.
Diaz was born in the U.S., but his father migrated from Cuba in the late 1980s.
“They said, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ I told them my family is from Cuba, and they asked where in Cuba they’re from,” Diaz told the Miami Herald/FLKeysnews.com on Thursday. “They said they were stranded out at sea for eight days and were trying to get away from all the rioting in Cuba.”
The men said they were from Santa Clara, Cuba, according to Diaz.
The charter boat fishermen offered gestures of kindness to the stranded men.
Greg Hartlaub, Takedown Charters captain, said he and Diaz gave them most of the food and water they had on the boat.
“Mike lit a cigarette and passed it to them, and they passed it around,” Hartlaub said. “They were very grateful. It’s a humbling experience.”
Hartlaub, 42, has been in the charter fishing business for 15 years, so he’s encountered migrants at sea before. But the charter clients that day were from the Midwest. Hartlaub and Diaz said they were amazed by the experience.
“They were blown away by what they saw,” Diaz said. “They don’t even remember what they caught that day, but they’ll remember that for the rest of their lives.”
Another boat radioed the migrants’ location to the Coast Guard and the Takedown went on with its day for fishing, Hartlaub said.
