Recent arrivals of migrants in Keys, but overall slowdown seen

A group of 22 lands at Dry Tortuga

A group of 22 people from Cuba arrived in the Lower Florida Keys on Thursday.

While the latest surge in migration from Cuba and Haiti has slowed since the state and federal governments stepped up patrols early in the year, boats are still getting through.

The group of 19 men and three women arrived at Dry Tortugas National Park, a remote group of islands west of Key West, Walter Slosar, chief Border Patrol agent for the Miami sector, said in a statement released on Twitter.

Dry Tortugas National Park was briefly shut down earlier this year to care for and transport about 300 Cubans who arrived before New Year’s Day.

The Dry Tortugas are about 70 miles from Key West and popular with tourists.

While most migrant landings during the latest surge — which began about two years ago and spiked over the Christmas holidays — have been mostly in the Keys, another landing Thursday shows how unpredictable they can be.

A group of 78 people from Haiti arrived Wednesday in a 54-foot Bertram fishing boat off Fort Pierce, about 190 miles north of the Keys, according to a statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations.

The U.S. Coast Guard also intercepted a migrant boat off the Middle Keys city of Key Colony Beach on Thursday afternoon, said spokeswoman Petty Officer Nicole Groll, but details of that stop were not immediately known.

While the federal government has not released recent numbers of migrants interdicted at sea or landings, arrivals have slowed in recent weeks, coinciding with increased federal resources and the activation of the Florida National Guard and other state police agencies to the Keys by Gov. Ron DeSantis in early January.

Most of the state’s contribution to the increased patrols have been in the form of aircraft from the National Guard, Florida Highway Patrol and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, as well as more boats from the state agency.

Major Gen. John D. Haas, adjutant general for the Florida National Guard, told a state Senate committee last week that he believes the increased presence in the air is making a difference.

“I think the real value of our aircraft is, we have identified and it has been established, that the deterrence factor of the aircraft is having an impact,” he told members of the Military and Veterans Affairs, Space, and Domestic Security Committee.

“Fewer people are making the trip, or attempting a trip, because of the aircraft in the sky that they’re seeing, and it’s being reported on social media that it’s not a good idea to try to make the trip because you will likely be detected because of the increased prevalence of aircraft in the skies along the coast,” he added.