One body found, 38 still missing from capsized migrant boat off Florida
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[January 27, 2022]
By Brian Ellsworth
MIAMI (Reuters) -Rescue crews recovered one
body but hopes dimmed for 38 other people lost at sea over the weekend
from a capsized boat off Florida's coast in an incident being treated as
an ill-fated human smuggling attempt, the U.S. Coast Guard said on
Wednesday.
The search-and-recovery operation stretched through a second full day on
Wednesday as the Coast Guard reported intercepting a separate sailing
vessel off the Bahamas overloaded with 191 Haitian migrants believed to
be headed for Florida.
The two incidents underscored a surge in migrants seeking passage to
Florida in flimsy vessels through the Caribbean by way of the Bahamas, a
known hub for sea-borne human smuggling.
The Coast Guard said in a Twitter post that its teams would "continue to
search throughout the night for the missing people" whose boat was
reported by a lone survivor to have overturned in rough seas on Sunday
morning.
A Coast Guard spokesman, Petty Officer Jose Hernandez, acknowledged late
Wednesday that chances of finding anyone else alive were dwindling but
that officials would "reassess" the situation on Thursday morning.
The survivor, found clinging to the overturned vessel on Tuesday, told
authorities after his rescue that he was one of 40 people aboard the
boat when it left the Bahamas' Bimini islands, about 50 miles (80 km)
east of Miami, on Saturday night, the Coast Guard said.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Jan/27/images/ads/current/peasleymemorials_lda_2022.png)
The vessel capsized the next morning about 45 miles (72 km) east of Fort
Pierce Inlet, off Florida's Atlantic coast, about midway between Miami
and Cape Canaveral. According to the survivor, nobody aboard had been
wearing a life jacket.
Their nationalities have not been released. But vessel crossings of
Haitian migrants have grown more frequent as the Caribbean island nation
faces worsening economic and political crises, as well as gang-related
kidnappings.
"We do suspect that this is a case of human smuggling, as this event
occurred in a normal route for human smuggling," Coast Guard Commander
Jo-Ann Burdian told a Miami news conference.
DISTRAUGHT SURVIVOR
The survivor was first spotted at around 8 a.m. on Tuesday by crew
members of a private tugboat who saw "there was somebody who was pretty
distraught on the vessel," said Joshua Nelson, operations manager for
the Jacksonville Fleet of Signet Maritime Corp, which owns the tug.
"We were towing a very large barge that was roughly 2,500 feet behind
us, so it (took) a little finesse to get close enough to the vessel and
not cause any waves to knock the man off," Nelson said in a telephone
interview.
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![](../images/012722pics/news_c5.jpg)
Coast Guard Cutter Ibis' crew search for 39 people reported missing
after their boat capsized in the Atlantic Ocean in what is being
called a human smuggling attempt gone awry, off the coast of the
Fort Pierce Inlet, Florida, January 25, 2022. Picture taken January
25, 2022. U.S. Coast Guard/Handout via REUTERS
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Jan/27/images/ads/current/xamis_lda_LUAL_2016.png) The crew immediately alerted the
Coast Guard, Nelson said.
The accident coincided with a small-craft advisory posted for the
area warning of high winds and heavy seas, according to the Coast
Guard.
Thirty-two other people were rescued from a capsized vessel west of
Bimini last Friday in yet another migrant crossing attempt gone
awry.
"The waters in the northern Florida Straits can be quite
treacherous," Burdian said. "In cases like this, small vessels,
overloaded, inexperienced operators, at night in bad weather can be
incredibly dangerous."
Through Wednesday morning, Coast Guard cutter crews, helicopter
teams, search planes and a U.S. Navy air crew crisscrossed an area
spanning more than 1,300 square miles (3,367 square km), about the
size of Rhode Island, between Bimini and Fort Pierce Inlet, a Coast
Guard statement said.
Incidents of overturned or interdicted vessels crowded with people,
many of them Haitians or Cubans seeking to reach the United States,
are not uncommon in the waters off Florida.
"There's (been) an increase in these human smuggling organizations"
over the last year, Anthony Salisbury, special agent in charge of
the Homeland Security Investigations office in Miami, said in a
telephone interview.
"These human smuggling organizations, you're dealing with
criminals," Salisbury said. "They really prey on the migrant
community."
Last May, 12 Cuban migrants died and eight were rescued after their
boat flipped over off Key West, Florida.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Jan/27/images/ads/current/rohlfs_lda_072017.png)
At least 557 Cuban migrants and more than 800 Haitians have been
picked up at sea by the Coast Guard since October, in addition to
nearly 7,400 Cubans and 3,900 Haitians interdicted during the
previous five years, according to the agency.
(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth in Miami; Additional reporting by
Brendan O'Brien in Chicago and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Writing
by Steve Gorman; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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