By John Lantigua, Eliot Kleinberg
Palm Beach Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
UPDATED: 1:32 p.m. March 07, 2007
Local, state and federal authorities today launched the largest homeland
security exercise ever staged in Florida, a response to a simulated
"mass migration" from Cuba.
Coast Guard Rear Admiral David Kunkel, head of the Homeland Security
Task Force Southeast, said more than 300 government employees from some
50 agencies would participate in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and
Monroe counties over two days.
In Palm Beach County, authorities were working a few simulated cases,
each with just a handful of immigrants.
That could be a regular day in this region, so close to the Bahamas that
it's a real-life popular drop-off spot for human smugglers and refugee
boats. In separate incidents in January alone, two people came ashore in
Jupiter and nine people landed at Palm Beach.
But today, the interdictions and landings were being reported by the
hour. And to the south, simulated chaos was taking place.
"This exercise focuses on a mass migration from Cuba," said Rear Admiral
Kunkel. "It could be from somewhere else in the Caribbean..but we
certainly recognize that Cuba is an area where we must be prepared."
By midmorning, authorities across South Florida had reported 155 people
coming ashore and another 2,000 had been pulled off boats and crowded
onto Coast Guard vessels, which reported a combined capacity of 12,150.
As with any good exercise, authorities were tormented by rumors; one had
a refugee coming ashore in Marathon, infected with the deadly Ebola
virus. All that was enough for Palm Beach County to declare a state of
emergency.
The exercise brought about a dozen people to the county's emergency
operations center in suburban West Palm Beach; they included
representatives of county emergency management, the sheriff's office,
fire-rescue, the health department, the Red Cross, and Lantana and Palm
Beach police.
Their scenarios:
About 9 a.m., the sheriff's office stopped a 27-foot boat with five
people aboard just offshore of The Breakers hotel on Palm Beach. They
were transferred to a Coast Guard cutter.
Around the same time, a 27-foot boat landed at the Palm Beach Inlet.
Eleven people were believed to have been on board. Authorities were
searching for six. Five were rounded up and taken to the nearby Border
Patrol station. (It would have been six, but one of the actors didn't
show up.)
And about 11, five people landed at Phil Foster Park, just west of the
southern tip of Singer Island. They were taken to the Border Patrol
station as well.
Around 11:45 a.m., four bodies washed ashore at Spanish River Park in
Boca Raton (this one was on paper only, for obvious logistical reasons.)
Kunkel said the goal of the exercise was to interdict at least 95
percent of the people trying to reach U.S. shores from Cuba and to
return them to the island.
"This exercise demonstrates our federal government's resolve to protect
our borders," he said.
In Broward and Miami-Dade counties, very few Coast Guard vessels and
aircraft will actually respond to the reports. But the participants will
be called on to detail how they would deploy vessels and manpower in
such an event. A major goal of the exercise is to coordinate action
among the local, state and federal agencies.
"This is much more of a test our command and control than an actual
deployment," said Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Commander Chris O'Neil.
Kunkel also emphasized that the goal of the Homeland Security team was
not just to stop migrants from coming from Cuba but to deter people in
Florida from launching boats and heading south in an attempt to pick up
migrants at sea.
"Our message is we don't want them to take to the sea," he said. "It is
illegal and dangerous."
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2007/03/07/0307migration.html
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