MIAMI — A group of 16 men migrating from Cuba arrived on a homemade blue raft in the Lower Florida Keys Wednesday morning.
This was the second group of people migrating from Cuba to land in the island chain in two days, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.
The men arrived around 6 a.m. on the island of Boca Chica, about a mile east of Key West and the location of U.S. Naval Air Station Key West.
Adam Hoffner, spokesman for the Border Patrol, said they told agents they had been at sea for three days after leaving Havana.
“Fortunately, none of the migrants required any medical treatment after spending three full days out at sea,” Hoffner said in an email. “The group was fortunate to survive this type of journey on a makeshift raft across our Florida Straits.”
Like all migrants from Cuba who are caught in the U.S. without a visa since the end of the “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy, they will be sent back to their home country. The Obama administration ended “wet-foot, dry-foot” in January 2017. The policy allowed those who set foot on U.S. land to stay in the country and apply for permanent residency after a year. Those caught at sea were taken back to Cuba.
Despite the end of the policy, federal officials have seen a spike in migration from Cuba this fiscal year, which runs from October to October.
Experts on the communist nation say worsening political, economic and health conditions there are compelling people to leave.
The U.S. Coast Guard says well over 800 people from Cuba have been caught at sea en route to South Florida this fiscal year. That’s up from just 49 in fiscal year 2020.
On Tuesday, 10 Cuban men arrived on a small wooden boat in Marathon, a city in the Middle Keys.
And, last week, the Coast Guard returned a total 52 migrants to Cuba agency crews stopped at sea in several separate incidents off the Keys.
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