MIAMI — Nearly 200 people migrating from Cuba arrived in the Florida Keys and on Hollywood beach between Wednesday and Thursday, U.S. Border Patrol officials said.
In total, 175 Cubans arrived during multiple arrivals on vessels over 24 hours, Walter Slosar, chief patrol agent for the agency’s Miami operations, said in a statement released on Twitter Thursday morning.
Their arrivals come as the U.S. Coast Guard searches for two missing migrants who were among a group of 21 people whose boat capsized Wednesday about 40 miles off the Middle Keys city of Marathon. A civilian boater rescued the other people on the vessel.
The service meanwhile suspended its search Wednesday for nine people who were lost at sea after their boat went down Monday off Lake Worth Beach in Palm Beach County.
South Florida, and particularly the Keys, is experiencing a major surge in maritime migration from both Cuba and Haiti as economic, political and safety conditions continue to deteriorate in both island countries.
