MIAMI — Fourteen people migrating from Cuba landed in the Upper Florida Keys on Friday morning, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.
They made landfall in a rustic wooden sailboat, Border Patrol agents said. The people will likely be sent back to Cuba aboard a Coast Guard cutter.
As economic and political conditions in Cuba continue to worsen, maritime migration from the island nation to South Florida is hitting numbers not seen by Border Patrol, the Coast Guard and other federal agencies that enforce immigration laws in several years.
In all of last fiscal year — which runs from October to September — the Coast Guard stopped fewer than 50 people at sea trying to reach the states. Already this fiscal year, that number is just under 700.
The trend is happening despite the political incentive for Cubans making the dangerous journey across the Florida Straits — the United States’ so-called “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy — having ended in early 2017.
The policy allowed those who set foot on U.S. soil above the high-water mark to stay in the country and apply for permanent residency after a year. Those caught at sea were sent back. President Barack Obama ended that policy in January 2017, and all Cubans caught trying to enter the United States without a visa are returned to the island.
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