MIAMI — After a roughly monthlong lag in arrivals to the Florida Keys, the third migrant boat in a week carrying people from Cuba came to shore in the island chain, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.
The latest group — six adults and one child — arrived around 11 p.m. Wednesday night, said Adam Hoffner, division chief for U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Miami sector. They came to shore in a homemade boat in the small Upper Keys city of Layton, Hoffner said.
The day before, 32 people from Cuba came ashore the Middle Keys city of Marathon around 5 a.m.
And on Sunday, three Cubans made landfall in a small migrant boat at Truman Waterfront Park in Key West, according to the Border Patrol.
All of the people who arrived this week will be processed for removal back to Cuba, Border Patrol officials said.
Stepped up patrols in the air and water off the Keys from the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, Florida National Guard and various other state agencies have resulted in significantly fewer migrant landings in the Keys and other parts of South Florida after numbers spiked at the end of last year and into the new year.
Maritime migration hit such a furious pace during that period that the federal government shut down Dry Tortugas National Park off Key West in January because so many people from Cuba were arriving their daily and overwhelming the small park staff.
The landings and halted attempts to reach the U.S. had already been building for about two years, with the Coast Guard reporting by December that its crews were encountering more migrants at sea along the Florida Straits than they had in nearly a decade.
Arrivals and attempted arrivals from Haiti to South Florida were also surging during this time. Unlike the small, homemade boats from Cuba carrying fewer people, vessels from Haiti were often larger, carried sometimes well over 100 people and arrived at a less-frequent clip.
The last Haitian migrant boat to reach South Florida was one carrying 70 people that grounded off Virginia Key, a small barrier island off Miami that leads to Key Biscayne, in January.
But people continue to flee Haiti’s increased gang violence, political instability and worsening economy. The boats are mostly being stopped by the Coast Guard and maritime forces from other nations well before they reach U.S. waters.
Last week, the Coast Guard stopped a 33-foot migrant boat with 94 people on board about 48 miles north of Cap-Haitian, Haiti, the agency said in a media release Thursday. The Coast Guard returned the people to Haiti.
The Coast Guard said its crews have stopped 4,717 people from Haiti at sea who were trying to reach South Florida since October.
Neighboring Caribbean nations are also encountering large numbers of migrants at sea making the dangerous journey in search of a better life.
Earlier this week, Trevor Botting, Royal Turks and Caicos Island Police chief, said his nation and the Bahamas are in the midst of an unprecedented increase in maritime migration from Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Since the beginning of 2023, Botting said 21 boats, mostly from Haiti, have been stopped trying to reach either Turks and Caicos or the Bahamas — and 2,600 migrants have been detained.
On Saturday, the Royal Bahamas Defense Force stopped a 40-foot boat near Turks and Caicos with 189 people from Haiti on board. The boat, which the Defense Force and Turks and Caicos police say was a smuggling vessel, was carrying 139 men, one boy and 49 women, according to the police department.
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