An overloaded sailboat crammed with 100 people from Haiti came near shore Thursday morning in the Florida Keys prompting an urgent response from local law enforcement agencies.
The Miami Herald reports the vessel was seen in the Upper Keys community of Tavernier, between Key Largo and the Village of Islamorada. The outlet cited local law enforcement sources.
The outlet further stated the group is the first large migrant group to arrive in weeks, defying recent state and federal efforts to stop boats at sea and hinder their entry to the island chain.
The new arrivals follow previous boatloads of migrants who have sought to land in the area, as Breitbart News reported.
Homeland Security Task Force-Southeast law enforcement partners interdicted multiple sea-based human smuggling incidents leading to the capture of more than nearly 1,400 migrants over the New Year’s Weekend.
The migrant arrests took place at sea and along the coast in the Florida Keys.
Many of these smuggling interdictions took place on heavily overloaded boats.
Since the beginning of the new fiscal year on October 1, 2022, the Miami Sector has experienced a 400 percent increase in migrant encounters, officials said in a written statement as seen by Breitbart.
File/Cuban migrants inside a Customs and Border protection vehicle as they wait to be taken for processing in Key Largo, FL on Jan. 8, 2023. A group of Cuban migrants landed in Key Largo early Sunday morning. (Jose A. Iglesias/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Since August, the HSTF-SE interdicted 7,784 migrants at sea and 4,401 migrants who managed to land of Florida beaches. In addition, officials recovered the bodies of 65 migrants during all of FY22.
A more recent interception happened mid-January when U.S. Coast Guard crews rescued a group of 45 migrants packed onto an overloaded sailboat.
Previous to that a group of Cubans had made an attempt of their own as their boat touched U.S. sovereign territory and they alighted.
Photos and video routinely show smugglers loaded the migrants onto the boat without life jackets.
Responding Coast Guard and other law enforcement partners removed the 45 migrants from the sailboat and transferred them to a Coast Guard cutter where they received food, water, shelter, and basic medical screening.
It is likely the migrants were repatriated to their home country.