MIAMI, United States. – A group of 19 Cuban rafters arrived on the Florida coast on March 11 in a rustic boat powered by a five-cylinder Mercedes-Benz engine, as stated in a video posted on Facebook through the middle Cuban newspaper.
In addition, the boat had six oars and more fuel than was necessary to cross the Straits of Florida.
According to the cousin of a rafter contacted by Cuban newspaper, the group was made up of five women and 14 men who left the Martí municipality in Matanzas on March 8. “The boat was built by a carpenter who belonged to Martí himself and also went with them,” said the interviewee.
The 19 rafters had to contribute money to buy the engine and other essential supplies for the journey.
Due to bad weather, the group had to run aground on a small islet known as Faro Viejo ―belonging to the Bahamas―, where they found supplies abandoned by other rafters.
Although to a lesser extent, the island’s rafters have continued to reach the shores of the United States after the entry into force of the parole of the Biden administration, by which 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans should benefit every month.
On March 14, agents from the US Border Patrol and the Florida Keys Sheriff’s Office detained five Cuban rafters who arrived at Sombrero Beach in a homemade boat, according to reported on Twitter Officer Walter N. Slosar.
A week earlier, another group of 17 Cuban rafters He was arrested by Border Patrol agents after making landfall on Long Key, another of the Florida Keys.
Since October 1, 2022, the start of the 2023 US fiscal year, US Coast Guard crews have interdicted more than 5,700 Cubans, a number that could soon exceed the 6,182 who were apprehended in the entire previous fiscal year.