(Tribune News Service) — A maritime stop of a migrant vessel by a Puerto Rican police boat on Thursday morning turned into a massive air and sea search for three missing men.

The U.S. Coast Guard found two of the men alive in the water by Thursday night, but, as of Friday, crews were still searching for a third.

"These two individuals are very fortunate we were able to rescue them," said Coast Guard Sector San Juan spokesman Ricardo Castrodad.

The police boat had came across the migrant boat about 12 nautical miles off Aquadilla, a town in the northwestern coast of Puerto Rico in the Mona Passage, a strait that separates the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, Castrodad said.

The boat had at least 31 men on board. They informed Coast Guard crews on the Cutter Joseph Napier that they were from the Dominican Republic and had been adrift three to five days.

They said the three men jumped overboard when they realized they were going to be stopped, Castrodad said. They were using fuel containers as flotation devices, according to the Coast Guard.

Coast Guard boat and air crews, including an HC-130 plane based at Elizabeth City, North Carolina, began searching for the missing men, Castrodad said.

A helicopter crew found the first man shortly after 7 p.m. swimming about 3 1/2 miles from shore. He was wearing a life jacket, according to the Coast Guard.

The second man was also wearing a life jacket, and had something else that upped his chances of surviving: a cellphone. He saw a helicopter searching the area and called 911, enabling the crew to adjust its search pattern and locate him around 8:15 p.m., Castrodad said.

That man told his rescuers that he lost contact with the third man about four hours earlier, and that man was not wearing a life jacket, Castrodad said.

The Coast Guard said in a statement on Twitter that anyone caught at sea trying to illegally migrate to the United States will be sent back to their country of origin. The agency is asking anyone with information about the incident to call Sector San Juan Command Center at 787-289-2041.

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