Cruise ships returning to Florida ports rescue 24 migrants, including five from Cuba
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Cruise ships returning to Florida ports rescued 24 US-bound migrants, including five from Cuba, stranded at sea on dirty rafts.
- Two groups of migrants were rescued after being stranded on makeshift boats in separate incidents on Monday.
- Five migrants were sighted during the Carnival Celebration about 25 nautical miles northwest of Cuba
- The Celebrity Beyond rescued 19 migrants lost at sea 200 miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida
- Several hundred migrants washed ashore on the Florida Keys over the holiday weekend
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Two cruise ships rescued groups of Cuban migrants lost at sea on Monday.
Footage recorded by a passenger aboard the Carnival Celebration showed five migrants stranded aboard a small, makeshift, single-engine boat 25 nautical miles northwest of Cuba on Monday around 11 a.m.
The liner sailed toward the migrants as crew helped them board, according to Miami ABC affiliate WPLG.
The group was sailing to the United States and had been without food or water for several days.
Five migrants were rescued by a Carnival cruise ship on Monday about 25 nautical miles off northwest Cuba. The individuals, all natives of the communist island, had been lost at sea for several days before the liner detected them and brought them aboard.
On Monday, the Celebrity Cruises ship Celebrity Beyond came across a wooden boat with 19 migrants lost at sea about 200 miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Olivia O’Brien, a passenger aboard the Celebration, said the ship turned at sea to pick up the migrants.
“It was very good to see it,” he said.
The migrants were turned over to the United States Coast Guard for processing.
In a separate incident, crew aboard the Celebrity Cruises ship rescued 19 migrants who were heading to Florida on a wooden raft.
The Celebrity Beyond was about 200 miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale when it encountered the ship.
Footage recorded by the ship’s captain, Kate McCue, details the crew’s rescue efforts.
A wooden-constructed raft is tethered to the Celebrity Beyond cruise ship after 19 migrants were seen stranded at sea about 200 miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Monday.
One of 19 migrants rescued from a wooden ship is helped into a wheelchair by crew members from a Celebrity Cruises ship on Monday.
The migrants were helped onto the ship and given blankets before being escorted to another area of the liner.
A US Coast Guard spokesperson told DailyMail.com that the agency was still working to identify the migrants.
The rescues come on the heels of massive migrant arrivals in the Florida Keys in recent days, which have strained the resources of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.
Over the weekend, 300 migrants washed up on the shores of Dry Tortugas National Park, about 70 miles west of Key West. Access to the park was closed so that authorities and paramedics could evaluate the migrants before transferring them to Key West.
A group of Cuban immigrants stand in the sun on the side of US Highway 1 on the island of Duck Key, Florida, in the Middle Keys, on Monday.
A group of Cuban immigrants stand in the sun on the side of US Highway 1 on the island of Duck Key, Florida, in the Middle Keys, on Monday.
In another migrant smuggling incident, 160 people arrived by boat to other parts of the Florida Keys over New Year’s weekend. On Monday, about 30 people in two new groups of migrants were found in the Middle Keys.
“This shows the lack of a roadmap by the federal government to address a mass migration problem that was foreseeable,” Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay said in a news release Monday.
US Border Patrol and Coast Guard crews patrolling South Florida and the Keys have been experiencing the biggest spike in migration by boat in nearly a decade, with hundreds of interceptions in recent months.
Most of the immigrants are from Cuba and Haiti and are escaping the economic crisis, food shortages and skyrocketing inflation.