Dozens feared dead as more Cubans take to sea

Mark Potter Correspondent • E-mail

MIAMI, Florida - It was 1:45 a.m. as a group of Cuban men and women sprinted across a beachfront road near Havana, carrying a homemade boat made of steel rods, wood and foam. They moved quietly to avoid detection by the Cuban authorities.

At the shoreline, they quickly loaded the small boat with meager supplies and put the oars in place. Then four of the men said their goodbyes and shoved off into the surf on this boat with no engine, hoping to eventually reach the Florida Keys — the closest point of which was 90 miles away across a dangerous ocean.

All of the men claimed to be political dissidents desperate to leave Cuba, with one noting this was his ninth attempt. Explaining why he would take such a tremendous risk, he said, "It's better to try and [risk getting] eaten by sharks than not to and get eaten by communism."

Although they didn't know it at the time, dozens of other Cubans were thought to have died at sea shortly before these men set sail, although it would be weeks before their story became public.

Coast Guard swarmed by migrants, smugglers
U.S. Coast Guard officials said they've seen a steady rise in the number of Cubans taking to the sea and heading to Florida. Increasingly, many are taking a more circuitous route to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, where they then travel over land to the southwest U.S. border. 

This year, the Coast Guard reported that of the 7,422 Cubans known to have set sail for Florida, 2,868 were interdicted at sea, and more than 4,500 made it past the Coast Guard cutters in the Florida Straits and arrived on U.S. soil. Under the so-called wet-foot/dry-foot policy, which offers special immigration privileges to Cubans, most received political asylum and were allowed to stay in the country — even if they were smuggled in.

Since Oct. 1, 2007, 1,190 Cubans are known to have left for Florida in boats, compared to 791 for the same period the year before. While 481 of those Cuban migrants were intercepted at sea, the other 709 made it to U.S. shores.

Coast Guard officials blamed the large percentage of successful landings on the increased activities of highly paid migrant smugglers, who use powerful speedboats to pick up Cubans on the island and bring them to South Florida.

Most of the smugglers, officials said, are financed by Cuban-American families eager to reunite with relatives. The going rate to carry a passenger to the U.S. by this often over-crowded and extremely dangerous method ranges from $8,000 to $12,000.

"One of the things that seems to get overlooked in the discussion is the responsibility of people who continue to support and hire migrant smugglers from the U.S.," said Lt. Commander Chris O'Neil of the U.S. Coast Guard in Miami. "Until people in the United States stop engaging in this criminal activity, we're going to see it continue. We're going to continue to see lives in peril, we're going to continue to see lives lost, and we're going to see Coast Guardsmen in harm's way."

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