by Greg Allen
All Things Considered, February 3, 2008 · Migration to the United States
from Cuba is now at its highest rate since the 1960s. And increasingly,
U.S. authorities say Cuban migrants are being brought here by smugglers
using high-speed boats.
It's a weekly, sometimes daily, event. A group of Cubans lands under
cover of darkness somewhere along Florida's 2,000-mile coastline.
At the Coast Guard Base in Key West, Commander Jim Olive says they still
see Cubans arriving on rafts and homemade boats but in the last few
years, the game has changed.
"We've seen an increase in the number of 'go-fast' vessels and it's
become more of an organized crime element," Olive explains. "They're
using 'go-fast' as their tool of the trade. And for quite a while, quite
frankly, we weren't able to keep up with them. Our boats just weren't
fast enough and they were walking away from us and scoffing as they did so."
In response, the Coast Guard acquired its own "go-fast" boats –
33-foot-long boats with triple 275-horsepower engines that have evened
the odds in the daily cat-and-mouse battle with Cuban smugglers.
Olive says that when they identify a suspicious vessel in the straits of
Florida, Coast Guard boats signal they want to stop and talk with the
people aboard.
"If they're not interested in stopping and talking, then we take it to
the next level which is to pursue them. The worst-case scenario is we
will disable the vessel and force them to comply."
The Coast Guard has sometimes resorted to firing bullets into the
engines of fleeing boats to stop them and their cargo of Cuban migrants.
Smuggling has long been a Florida cottage industry. But instead of
patrolling for rum runners or drug traffickers, the Coast Guard now
spends most of its time trying to stop people smugglers.
Under long-standing U.S. law, Cubans who arrive in the United States
automatically receive refugee status. But since 1995, under the
"wet-foot/dry-foot" policy, Cubans must actually make it to land — not
be stopped while still at sea. That has helped create the
people-smuggling industry.
Suddenly, it became important not just to leave Cuba but to reach
American soil quickly and without being detected by U.S. officials.
Coast Guard Admiral David Kunkel says the boats are often stolen and the
people operating them are themselves migrants who have recently arrived
from Cuba. But, Kunkel says, it's profit, not politics that's the
motivation. Smugglers charge Cubans up to $10,000 a head for the 90-mile
trip to Florida. And Kunkel says safety is not a concern.
"So if they pick up 30 people or 40 people and jam them into a boat that
has a capacity for only 18 or less…I mean do the math," Kunkel says.
"The boat is overloaded. It is unsafe. And we've had some very
unfortunate incidents lately. I mean, we had one boat disappear with 40
people on it."
It was a boat that left the port of Matanzas in Cuba on Nov. 23, headed
to Florida. Among the people on board were Osmany Martinez's wife and
infant daughter. Martinez himself came to Florida from Cuba by boat a
year ago. More than two months since the boat disappeared, Martinez
still holds out hope that they may be found.
"We have no rest," Martinez says. "One day after the other hoping to
find out something or to receive a phone call letting us know about
them. There are little kids on board also. My wife is still
breast-feeding my daughter."
Martinez maintains he didn't know that his wife and daughter were
attempting the trip from Cuba and he has no idea who may have arranged
and paid for their passage.
Coast Guard authorities share the frustration of family members but say
one of the problems is they weren't called until nearly two weeks after
the boat disappeared.
Meanwhile, the number of Cubans making their way to the U.S. continues
to rise. Interdictions by the Coast Guard last year were the highest
they had been since the Balsero crisis of 1994.
"There is sort of a silent exodus taking place from Cuba," says Ramon
Saul Sanchez, an activist in Miami who runs a group called the Democracy
Movement.
After the transition of power from Fidel to Raul Castro, Sanchez says,
the hardships and repression in Cuba have continued.
"And this causes people to lose hope, which is the worst condition that
you can suffer. And then they look for that hope somewhere else and try
to leave the island in whatever way they can."
Sanchez condemns the smugglers and those who hire them but says U.S.
policies of restricting travel and remittances to Cuba only make people
more desperate.
Admiral Kunkel meanwhile says the Coast Guard won't be able to stop the
people-smuggling operations until Cuban-Americans in south Florida stop
supporting them.
"The bottom line here is that we need a population to agree that this is
unsafe and illegal. And we haven't quite reached that state yet," Kunkel
says.
As the Coast Guard has stepped up patrols in the Florida straits,
smugglers have developed new routes. Many of the boats now head west
from Cuba and make for Mexico's Yucatan peninsula where Cubans make
their way over land to the U.S. border.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18648382&ft=1&f=1004
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