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The migrants might be transferred to federal regulation enforcement brokers within the Keys after which processed by regional U.S. Border Patrol stations to find out their authorized standing, Rear Adm. Brendan C. McPherson, commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District, mentioned in an announcement. “Irregular, unlawful maritime migration is all the time harmful and infrequently lethal. Don't take to the ocean,” he mentioned.
Although the Nationwide Park Service didn’t specify the place the migrants had been from, it mentioned the Florida Keys has seen an uptick in arrivals from Cuba. The Coast Guard, which despatched 80 asylum seekers again to Cuba final week, has additionally had quite a few current at-sea interdictions, however has not shared particular numbers.
In the meantime, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Workplace mentioned that greater than 160 refugees landed within the center and higher Florida Keys over the weekend. Sheriff Rick Ramsay blamed Washington in an announcement, saying it “reveals an absence of a working plan by the federal authorities to take care of a mass migration difficulty that was foreseeable” and describing the event as a “humanitarian disaster.” (Ramsay was one of many sheriffs who in 2020 endorsed Donald Trump, who promised to tighten U.S. borders, for reelection.)
Lt. Cmdr. John Beal, a spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard’s Seventh District and the Homeland Safety Activity Pressure Southeast, didn't agree with the sheriff’s characterization.
“I can not communicate on behalf of the sheriff,” he mentioned by way of textual content message, “however I might not say it is a disaster. Historic precedent has proven a discount throughout the winter months as a result of maritime climate will get worse and doesn't assist the small, rustic, overloaded vessels making harmful crossings over the FL Straits.”
The rise in arrivals, he instructed, is a results of “unseasonably good climate” that makes circumstances extra appropriate to “very harmful maritime ventures” to enter the USA by sea.
Cuba, which is ruled by an authoritarian, one-party system, has been gripped by an financial disaster for greater than a yr, spurring blackouts, meals shortages and hovering inflation. As of December, in accordance with U.S. authorities statistics, Cubans had encountered officers on the border practically 270,000 instances in 2022, amid what consultants have known as the largest exodus of Cubans in historical past.
The current developments come as Trump-era migration insurance policies are being contested. Final week, the Supreme Court docket blocked the Biden administration’s effort to finish Title 42, which permits officers to shortly expel migrants from the USA with out permitting them the chance to hunt asylum.
Biden’s try to finish the “Stay in Mexico” program, which sends asylum seekers again to Mexico to await immigration proceedings, was additionally thwarted by a federal choose in Texas final month.
Authorities are nonetheless working to find out precisely what number of migrants tried to enter the park, in addition to their nationalities and instances for staying in the USA. However first, they should be moved to Key West. “There isn't any infrastructure to assist life the place they're now (no water, meals, medical assets to maintain any long run presence),” Beal wrote.
In line with knowledge from the Seventh District, the Coast Guard interdicted 4,076 Cuban migrants within the final three months of the 2022 calendar yr. There have been 6,182 interdictions within the 2022 fiscal yr, which ended Sept. 30, and 838 within the 2021 fiscal yr.
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