The Coast Guard on Tuesday shipped 52 migrants from Haiti and the Dominican Republic back home after they were intercepted trying to reach US soil on a rickety 30-foot “makeshift vessel,” officials said.
A Coast Guard Ocean Sentry airplane spotted the rickety boat during a Saturday night patrol just 27 miles off the shore of Puerto Rico’s Mona Island and dispatched the Cutter Joseph Texano to intercept them, the maritime .
The sea-borne migrants – 51 Dominicans and one Haitian – were turned over to federal immigration authorities an🐻d returned to their native countries, the agency said.
“This successful interdiction was due to the swift response and professionalism of the Coat Guard units and watchstanders involved,” Lt. Commander Edward Kunigonis said in a statement.
“These voyages continuously threaten the safety of migrants, many of which do not fully understand how truly dangerous the voyage may be until it’s too late,” said Kunigonis, who is chief of enforcement for the Coast Guard’s San Juan, Puerto Rico, sector.
“We urge anyone thinking of taking part in an unlawful maritime migration voyage to not take to the sea,” he added. “Use lawful pathways.”
The waters between Puerto Rico and the island of H🧸ispaniola has been a busy stretch of ocean for the Coast Guaꦯrd over the past few years.
Between Oct. 1 and April 30 alone they have intercepted 35 illegal migrant craft in the Mona Pass – the stretch between the two islands – and deported 1,199 illegal migrants.
Of those, 1,141✤ were from the Dominican Republic, 57 wꦗere from Haiti, and one was from Venezuela.
Last month, three suspected gangbangers linked to a 2020 shootout in Puerto Rico that left four peopleꦅ dead were picked up aboard ♔a ship headed to the US, officials said.
Earlier in April, the Coast Guard cut off three separate ships and took 101 illegal migrants into custody in t💜he course of just one weekend, the agency reported.
Authorities said one of those was “a grossly overloaded makeshift vessel.”