Hundreds of migrants land in Florida over New Year’s weekend, prompting closure of national park
- National Park Service announced closure to allow law enforcement and medical personnel to evaluate the migrants before transporting them to Key West
- US Border Patrol and coastguard along South Florida and the Keys have been experiencing the largest increase of migrations by boat in nearly a decade
At least 500 migrants have landed along the Florida Keys over the last few days, prompting the temporary closure of an isolated national park, officials said.
About 300 migrants arrived in small boats at the Dry Tortugas National Park – about 70 miles west of Key West – over the New Year’s Day weekend. The National Park Service announced on Monday that the park was closed to allow law enforcement and medical personnel to evaluate the migrants before transporting them to Key West.
The park service said the closure would last for several days.
Like other parts of the Florida Keys, the park has recently seen an influx of migrants arriving by boat from Cuba, according to the park service.
“Refugee arrivals require a lot of resources from the Sheriff’s Office as we help our federal law enforcement partners ensure the migrants are in good health and safe,” said Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay in a news release.
In a separate migration, more than 160 migrants arrived by boats in other parts of the Florida Keys over the weekend, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. On Monday, 30 people in two other groups of migrants were found in the Middle Keys.
At least 88 of the migrants are from Cuba, US Customs and Border Protection said in a tweet.
In an attempted landing, crew members aboard two cruise ships rescued about two dozen migrants in small boats on Monday. Crew members from Celebrity Beyond rescued 19 migrants and the Carnival Celebrations crews found five people about 29 miles northwest of Cuba.
Federal agencies, including Homeland Security Task Force – Southeast and the US Coast Guard Southeast, and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office have been managing the “spike” in migrant landings since Saturday, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.
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The wave of migration is a result of inflation, food shortages, and economic turmoil across Cuba and other parts of the Caribbean. Florida’s migrant landings are the latest border scramble the US has faced in recent months.
To call attention to the Biden administration’s immigration policies, border-state governors have sent migrants in buses to other cities.
In December, three buses of migrant families arrived from Texas near the home of Vice-President Kamala Harris on Christmas Eve months after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sent nearly 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard
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US Border Patrol and coastguard along South Florida and the Keys have been experiencing the largest increase of migrations by boat in nearly a decade with migrants mostly from Cuba and Haiti.
Since October 1, 2022, the Miami Sector of the US Border Patrol has experienced “over a 400 per cent increase in migrant encounters,” said Chief Patrol Agent Walter N Slosar in a statement.
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office criticised the federal response to migrant landings on Monday.
US Border Patrol told the sheriff’s office that the federal response to some of the migrants arriving may have to wait a day – “aggravating the mass migration crisis in the Keys”, the sheriff’s office said.
“This shows a lack of a working plan by the federal government to deal with a mass migration issue that was foreseeable,” Ramsay said.
