Human smuggling by boat is rising, US officials say

Human smuggling by boat is rising, US officials say
BY ALFONSO CHARDY
The Miami Herald November 11, 2013

MIAMI - The number of boats bringing undocumented migrants to the U.S.
from various countries other than Cuba is on the increase, according to
federal authorities, who say smugglers have turned to other
nationalities as the smuggling of Cubans has dried up.

One Oct. 16, a boat carrying migrants from Haiti capsized east of Miami
Beach. Just two weeks before, on Oct. 3, federal authorities spotted a
boat leaving Bimini, in the Bahamas, and traveling west toward U.S.
shores without navigation lights.

On Aug. 28, smugglers dumped a group of Haitian migrants near Palm Beach
and ordered them to swim ashore. A 14-year-old girl was later found dead
on the beach.

And in 2009 and 2010, boats traveling between the Bahamas and South
Florida smuggled dozens of Brazilians who first traveled to Europe and
then flew to the Bahamas to board the smuggling boats to South Florida.

Federal officials say there's an increase in migrant boat traffic toward
South Florida involving the smuggling of undocumented foreign nationals.
The boat traffic appears to have drawn smugglers who once primarily
transported Cuban migrants across the Florida Straits and who now are
focusing on nationals from other countries because the Cuban-migrant
smuggling organization has largely been dismantled, the officials said.

"Smugglers look for business anywhere," said a federal official familiar
with the issue.

The dismantling of the Cuban-migrant smuggling networks along with
improved Coast Guard patrolling and interdiction tactics are credited
with a significant decrease in the number of Cuban migrants arriving by sea.

As a result, the majority of undocumented Cuban migrants now arrive over
the Mexican border. They come not only by boat from the island to the
Yucatan Peninsula, but also overland from South and Central America.

Homeland Security Investigations, a unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, is the lead agency investigating boat-based
migrant-smuggling networks.

The increase in the number of boats operated by smugglers has occurred
over the past two or three years, investigators say.

The federal official familiar with the issue said that while several
smuggling organizations were involved, they seemed to share similar
traits. A significant number of them, the official added, operated boats
that began voyages toward South Florida in the Bahamas, but carried
migrants who came from as far away as Brazil, Ecuador or Colombia. Some
of the migrants also started out in Haiti or the Dominican Republic but
then made their way to the Bahamas to board smuggling boats for the
final leg to South Florida.

In some cases, small boats overloaded with migrants begin their trips in
Haiti.

That was the case in the ill-fated voyage of the 25-foot fishing boat
that flipped over seven miles east of Miami Beach, killing four female
Haitian migrants on Oct.16. It carried 15 people, some of whom started
the voyage in the northwestern Haitian coastal city of Port-de-Paix,
Louisias Pierre, one of the survivors, said in an interview.

An affidavit in Miami federal court from an HSI special agent quoted one
of the witnesses in the capsizing as saying that people boarded the boat
in the Bahamas,

Pierre said the smugglers promised to transfer the migrants to a larger
boat in the Bahamas, but that never happened. The boat did stop in the
Bahamas, but only to pick up more migrants.

In the Oct. 3 voyage, the 24-foot boat began its trip in Bimini,
according to an affidavit from another HSI special agent.

When a Customs and Border Protection vessel intercepted the suspect
boat, it disobeyed orders to stop.

"The operator of the suspect vessel then proceeded to increase his speed
and performed evasive maneuvers, such as aggressively making left and
right turns in an S-pattern, in an attempt to avoid interdiction," the
HIS affidavit said. "Due to the failure of the suspect vessel to stop,
CBP fired two warning shots forward of the bow."

The affidavit said the boat finally stopped about 10 miles east of
Elliott Key, just south of Key Biscayne.

When CBP officers approached, they saw five men on the boat. One told
officers that he was testing the boat, possibly to purchase it. A second
man claimed he was brokering the sale. The three other men, they
claimed, were migrants they had rescued from a makeshift boat adrift in
the sea.

But once everyone was brought ashore, federal agents learned that two of
the men were migrant smugglers and the other three were Cuban migrants
without visas.

The federal official familiar with the issue said migrants pay a wide
range of prices to be smuggled in - from as little as $1,000 or $2,000
per person to cross from the Bahamas to South Florida to as much as
$15,000 for a comprehensive travel package from Brazil that includes
flights to Europe and the Bahamas and then the boat ride to South Florida.

It's unclear whether most boats are interdicted or get through to South
Florida.

"We don't catch them all," the official said. "It's a cat-and-mouse game."

Source: "Human smuggling by boat is rising, US officials say | MCT
National News | McClatchy DC" -
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/11/208250/human-smuggling-by-boat-is-rising.html