A video screen grab shows Coast Guard rescue crews beside a vessel used by migrants off Key West, Fla, as seen in a Mar 23, 2023, post. (U.S. Coast Guard)
(Tribune News Service) — U.S. Coast Guard crews on Monday afternoon rescued several people from a migrant boat taking on water off the Florida Keys, the agency said.
The rescue happened about 40 miles off Key West, according to a statement and video posted on Twitter.
The Coast Guard did not reveal the nationalities of the people on the boat. However, the vessel shown in the video is similar to the types of homemade boats used by Cubans over the course of the ongoing surge in maritime migration to South Florida.
The exact number of people on the boat was also not immediately known, although it appeared from the video to be more than 10.
Since October, the Coast Guard said it’s intercepted 6,449 people from Cuba and 4,230 people from Haiti at sea en route to South Florida.
The situation became an international story over the Christmas holidays when so many Cuban migrants arrived on the shores of Dry Tortugas National Park off the Lower Keys that the federal government was forced to shut down a national park.
The federal government and state of Florida have both increased resources, mostly aircraft and boats, to the Keys to aide in patrolling for migrants, and arrivals and at-sea stops have slowed significantly.
Attempts to reach the United States by sea continue, though. The Coast Guard stopped a migrant boat from reaching the the shore of the Middle Keys city of Marathon Sunday.
Also on Sunday, Coast Guard crews pulled 20 people from Cuba who were stranded on Dog Rocks, a group of islands in Bimini in the Bahamas, the agency said.
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