MIAMI — Since Sunday, more than 100 Cuban migrants have arrived in the Florida Keys, with another landing happening Tuesday morning, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.
Nine people came ashore in a makeshift boat around 10:30 a.m. on Fat Deer Key in the Middle Keys, said Adam Hoffner, division chief for U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Miami operations.
On Monday, Walter Slosar, chief patrol agent for Miami operations, said in a statement on Twitter that agents took 101 people from Cuba into custody who landed in seven separate landings in the Keys since Sunday.
Hoffner said there was another Cuban migrant landing late Monday night in the Marquesas, a group of uninhabited islands located west of Key West.
Over the weekend, the Coast Guard said crews returned 106 people to Cuba who the agency intercepted at sea off the Keys. That brings the total number of Cuban migrants the Coast Guard stopped on the water since Oct. 1 to 1,132 people, a monthly average not seen in several years.
The exodus from Cuba — with South Florida, and mostly the Keys, being the destination — is at its highest level in nearly a decade, with no signs of slowing down.
The fiscal year that ended in October was the busiest in eight years for Coast Guard crews patrolling the Florida Straits — with 6,182 people stopped at sea. That number will more than double if the rate seen last month continues.
———
