Discoverer Americas crosses paths with migrant rafts in Straits of Florida

[rob]

A second raft has just been spotted! The USCG is in the process of/has already been notified...

Dang, I wonder percentage of these darn rafts actually get to Florida. Or how many are actually out there bobbing around in the tide.

[BMCSRetired]

In 1990 on the CGC "luxi-sans-2" we found a raft from Cuba with 4 cuban brothers onboard, they had been drifting for 15 days. We dropped them off in Miami on our way north.

Later that year I talked with aome british Navy guys. He said they routinely found rafts then in the approaches to the English channel and OCCASIONALLY with bodies lashed to them. I was horrified to say the least. Then I did migrant ops off of DOMREP in 2002/2003 when everybody was off Haiti and the Dominicans were leaving in droves out the back door. We stopped a 36' open vessel once with 264 people onboard. It was like a clown car, they kept coming and coming and we kept counting.

I could not understand why people would do this until I flew over Haiti once on a Search and Rescue case. It looked like hell on earth from 2,000' up and theat was when I realized why these people were risking life and limb to get out of there...

[rob]

That's just horrifying. wow.