Miami, Jan 11 (EFE) Desantis, will declare a state of emergency to stop the “influx of migrants.”
A first group of at least 25 people disembarked this afternoon on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, north of Miami, and the authorities “arrested some of them and located the boat,” the Sun Sentinel newspaper reported.
The second group, made up of Cuban immigrants, arrived this morning in a precarious boat at a beach in Key Colony, in the extreme south of Florida, and at least 19 were detained.
“U.S. Border Patrol agents and police officers responded to a landing of migrants on a beach in the Key Colony and encountered 19 Cubans,” Walter N. Slosar, chief of the border patrol, said on social media. Customs and Border Protection Miami Sector.
Slosar also reported in a tweet that yesterday the US Coast Guard repatriated 273 Cubans as a result of various interceptions at sea, most of them in the Straits of Florida.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) warned today of the increase in material and human resources in response to the “unprecedented level of migrant landings on our shores,” and following Desantis’s decision to declare the state of emergency.
Last week, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, declared a state of emergency and deployed the National Guard, following the arrival of numerous Cuban and Haitian emigrants by sea in this southern state.
DeSantis cited the recent landings of more than 400 people on the beaches of Dry Tortugas National Park, in the Florida Keys.
The Florida governor’s measure allows the mobilization of National Guard troops and the allocation of large new state resources to confront the migratory wave that is affecting the south of the state.
The FDEM indicated in the statement that, as of today, “more than 300 vessels have been identified for removal with 299 landings and 5,184 immigrants.”
According to this division, the National Guard has mobilized 12 aircraft or “air assets” and deployed between 100 and 150 members of this reserve force, made up of volunteers, to assist the Coast Guard.
Cuban-born Republican Senator Marco Rubio today blamed the “failed immigration policies” of U.S. President Joe Biden for this new wave of migration, especially Cubans and Haitians.
Rubio met this Tuesday with commanders of the US Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), among other institutions, and said, after praising the “dedication” of the coast guard, that “they cannot do it alone ” and that the Biden Administration “must take action to enforce the law.”
Between December 30 and January 5 alone, “more than 1,100 Cubans and Haitians arrived in the Florida Keys,” in the extreme south of this southern state, Rubio warned.
So far in the fiscal year of 2023, which began on October 1, the US Coast Guard has already intercepted 4,915 Cuban immigrants in the waters of the Florida Straits, compared to the 6,182 intercepted during all of 2022.
In the fiscal periods of 2021 and 2019, 838 and 49 Cubans were intercepted, respectively. EFE
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