MIAMI (AP) — A group of more than 100 Haitian migrants arrived early Wednesday morning in a sailboat off the coast of the lower Florida Keys, local and federal officials said.
The boat arrived at 4 a.m. about 300 feet (91 meters) from a Key West condominium, and law enforcement officers arrived on the scene shortly after, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. Most of the 118 migrants were men, but the group also included women and children, the Sheriff’s Office said.
The landing comes as the Caribbean country grapples with a wave of gang violence that has killed several thousand people and left hundreds of thousands homeless in the country’s capital in recent years. Gangs have targeted key public figures as well as hospitals, schools, banks and other crucial institutions in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the Americas.
Tens of thousands of Haitians have left their country in recent years, many arriving at the U.S. southern border, but President Joe Biden’s administration has taken measures that have made it even more difficult for asylum seekers to enter across the land border.
With the support of federal, estate and local law enforcement agencies, U.S. Border Patrol agents responded to the arrival of Haitian migrants this week, Samuel Briggs II, the agency’s acting Chief Patrol Agent in Miami, said on the social media platform were assessing people at the scene and a group of them were transported to a local clinic, but no one had life-threatening injuries, the Sheriff’s Office said.
The Biden administration has been sending Haitians back to their country since April, when the first deportation flight took place in months. At the time, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it “will continue to enforce U.S. laws and policies in the Straits of Florida and the Caribbean, as well as at the southwest border.”
U.S. policy is to deport noncitizens who have no legal basis to remain in the United States.
