Boat crash dumps 18 Cuban migrants into yard

BAY HARBOR ISLANDS
Boat crash dumps 18 Cuban migrants into yard
Authorities arrested four smuggling suspects and took 18 Cuban migrants
into custody after a dramatic boat chase that ended in a crash behind a
mansion.
Posted on Thu, Mar. 13, 2008
BY TIM CHAPMAN, ERIKA BERAS AND OSCAR CORRAL
ocorral@MiamiHerald.com

Israel Berens was working at his home office in his Bay Harbor Islands
home Wednesday when he heard his dog, Gabby, running back and forth
along the glass back doors, barking and staring outside.

With his house on a canal, Berens sees the occasional boat cruise by.
But when he peeked outside, he saw a bit of Miami Vice-style mayhem,
with police chasing Cuban migrants around his neighbor's lawn.

Authorities took 18 Cuban migrants into custody after rounding them up
in the tony backyard of Berens' neighbor. Five of them were taken to the
emergency room of Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach after
suffering injuries. They also arrested four suspected of smuggling nearby.

Berens, who is of Cuban descent, gave police water to take to the
migrants, who were sprawled out on the grass and terrace in handcuffs.

''This is the most exciting thing we've seen in 28 years that I've lived
here,'' Berens said.

One of the Cuban women who arrived on the boat identified herself as
Eralia Perez Avila, and said they had spent seven days at sea.

''We got here wet and touched land,'' she said, slapping the sidewalk
she was sitting on. ``We came from Matanzas. A boat picked us up.''

Authorities gave the following account of what happened:

North Miami Police marine patrol officer Guido Andollo was on a routine
patrol when he spotted two boats Wednesday morning. He stopped one of
them with four people in it for a routine check, and called Indian Creek
marine patrol to stop the second boat. When Indian Creek police
approached the second boat, it took off, said North Miami police
spokesman Lt. Neal Cuevas.

The police boat chased it into a canal, where it crashed into a dock
behind the mansion on the corner of 96th Street and East Broadview
Drive. Indian Creek police officer Michael DelPozo, who chased the
migrants, said the smuggling boat tried to ram him ``three or four times.''

''We were side by side, like in a movie,'' DelPozo said. ``He tried to
push me over to the other side, but there were other boats by the docks.
He ran down a canal, but he didn't know it had no end.''

``When he realized it was going to a dead end, I initiated to stop with
my boat. He smashed into the dock, into the seawall, and all eighteen
people landed in the water . . . I had never seen that many people go
into the water.''

DelPozo said the scene was dramatic.

``They were scrambling over each other to get to the wall and they just
wanted to know if they had made it, if they had landed, because of the
whole wet-foot/dry-foot thing.''

According to U.S.-Cuba migration policy, Cuban migrants who make it to
U.S. soil are generally allowed to stay. But if Cubans are intercepted
before they make it to land, they are usually repatriated.

One woman who lives in the apartment building across the canal, who
asked that her name not be used, said one large Cuban man was standing
on the seawall pulling other migrants onto land.

Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Lazaro Guzman said the five injured
migrants suffered cuts and broken arms when the boat crashed into the
dock. The rest were taken to Border Patrol in Pembroke Pines for processing.

Among the personal items left on the smugglers' boat: skirts, shoes,
religious artifacts, crosses, statuettes.

''It's a big puzzle we are trying to put together,'' said Guzman, who
added that the migrants' families paid $10,000 each for them to be
transported. ``This is an organized smuggling venture from Cuba to the
United States.''

Miami Herald Staff Writers Alison Hollenbeck and Carli Teproff
contributed to this report.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami_dade/beaches/story/454670.html