Speed drives increase in risky smuggling

Fast boats make the trip from Cuba shorter, but danger remains.

By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent
Published February 9, 2008

Sixto Sanchez, 29, stands on a sandbar off Key Biscayne, where he and 29 other Cubans were dropped off by a smuggling boat on New Year's Day. Sanchez swam ashore, but his wife and daughter were stranded and eventually sent back to Cuba. Video: Cuban tale of two crossings
	[Lara Cerri | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Lara Cerri | Times] Sixto Sanchez's wife, Milagros Toledo, 29, said she has tried to leave Cuba three times and will try again. "We understand the risks," she said. "But how long are we going to have to wait to see our husbands?" At right, her daughter Rachel, 6. [Lara Cerri | Times] Marisa Echevarria, 32, left, and Miriela Alvarez, 33, cry as they tell their story of how they tried to cross over to Florida with their children. Marisa traveled with 7-year-old twin boys and her 6-year-old girl. Miriela had her 18-month-old boy with her. Marisa's husband, Pedro Milian left Cuba two months ago and lives in Hialeah. Miriela's husband left five months ago and lives in Key West. [Lara Cerri | Times] Milagros Toledo walks to a neighbor's home in Caibarien to get coffee.

KEY BISCAYNE-- Shortly after midnight on New Year's Eve, a smuggler's speed boat killed its engines in shallow waters near Miami.

Thirty men, women and children piled over the sides onto a submerged sandbar.

Several hundred feet away a low seawall and the silhouette of a lighthouse were visible against the night sky. As fireworks burst in the air, the group waded for shore - the latest in a growing wave of Cuban migrants making a desperate and risky bid to enter the United States.

The men leading the way lost their footing as the sandbar gave way to a treacherous channel of deeper water. Battling the current, the men reached the seawall exhausted.

Looking back they could hear the women and children, crying for help from the sandbar.

"Auxilio," the women pleaded.

Two men swam back to comfort the women and children. Sixto Sanchez, 29, ran for help.

Within 40 minutes sirens filled the air as police and rescue teams rushed to the park. By the time a Coast Guard helicopter trained its spotlight on the stranded Cubans - including Sanchez's wife, Milagros Toledo, 29, and their daughter Rachel, 6 - the tide lapped at their chests.

Pushed by the current, the 17 men and women hugged each other tightly with the children raised on their shoulders.

In the confusion no one noticed that a 28-year-old man was missing, swept away by the current.

Expensive, still risky

In recent months the number of Cubans attempting to smuggle their way into the United States has risen steadily, on course to surpass 10,000 this year, compared to 7,693 in 2007,a 30 percent increase.

The surge began about three years ago, officials say, as Cuban migrants turned from dangerous makeshift rafts to "go-fast"boats operated by Miami smugglers.

The speed boats offer better odds - albeit at a high price. Smugglers charge $8,000 to $10,000 per person. The average boatload can be worth as much as $200,000. Payment is due only after successful arrival. Failed trips aren't charged.

The Coast Guard estimates that almost 50 percent of those who try to get here are stopped and sent back - 901 since Oct. 1. But they are concerned by the rising numbers.

The U.S. Coast Guard district commander, Rear Adm. D.W. Kunkel, made an unusual appeal last month, asking Cuban-Americans who pay smugglers to fetch their relatives to "put the criminals who engage in human smuggling out of business by not using them."

At least 65 Cubans may have drowned in recent weeks on failed smuggling runs, he wrote. He mentioned a boat that left Cuba in November carrying 42 people.

"Despite our best efforts," he wrote, "no sign of that boat or its passengers has ever been seen."

Fighting time and tide

The New Year's Eve smuggling run began two days earlier near Caibarien, a quiet coastal town of 40,000 residents 190 miles east of Havana.

On Dec. 30, the Cubans say, they received instructions by cell phone from smugglers in Miami to get themselves to an uninhabited key by dawn the next day. That night they quietly climbed aboard a homemade rowing boat that Sanchez, a former school teacher-turned-carpenter, had spent the previous three days building at a friend's house.

They rowed in the dark for seven hours to the key where they hid in the mangroves.At midday a 35-foot Century speedboat roared toward shore. The captain ordered everyone aboard - 30 people on a boat built for 10.

There was no sight of the Cuban coast guard. Light clouds provided welcome relief from the sun. The seas were calm.By nightfall they were approaching U.S. waters near Miami.

Those familiar with the waters off Key Biscayne say the boat captain should have known better than to drop his cargo near the seawall. An easily accessible beach sits just to the northeast.

"We were prepared to get our feet wet. They can't get right on shore, we realize that," said Sanchez. "Those boats aren't cheap. They are taking a risk."

But left on the sandbar, the women and six children, including a pair of toddlers under the age of two, had no chance.

"We never expected it to get that deep," said Luis Guzman, 57, who made it ashore. He left his jacket on the sea wall before swimming back to the women.

When park manager Robert Yero, 37, reached the scene he heard cries but could see nothing. "I turned my car so its lights were out to sea and that's when we saw them. They were strung out on the sand bar about 300 feet away chest deep in water."

Yero called in assistance. Within minutes fire trucks and a Coast Guard helicopter arrived.

"The tide was rising fast. Another 10 more minutes and everyone would have drowned," said Sanchez. He watched as his wife and child were hauled into a Coast Guard inflatable dinghy.

Four days later the body of the missing man was found floating in Biscayne Bay.

Vow to try again

That night the 12 men who reached shore were admitted legally to the United Statesunder the wet foot/dry foot policy, which says Cubans who arrive on U.S. soil may remain. Those stopped at sea - even if they're standing in the water - are sent back unless they qualify for asylum.

The 17 men, women and children rescued from the sandbar spent the next 10 days being transferred from one ship to another, sleeping on the open deck under blankets.

They begged immigration officials not to be sent back. Guzman argued to no avail that he wasn't "wet foot," that he had reached dry land before swimming back.

The U.S. Coast Guard, which works closely with its Cuban counterpart, intercepted three more smugglers' boats on the trip back to Cuba, picking up dozens more migrants as well as the captains.

Back in Cuba, officials warned the group that they faced a four-year jail sentence if they were caught trying again. The women were told they could lose custody of their children next time.

For most it was not the first time they had been caught.

Guzman, interviewed at his home in Regla, a suburb of Havana, said it was his 26th attempt. He had never gotten beyond Cuban territorial waters, either intercepted at sea, or turned back by bad weather or problems with his craft.

Cuban officials tried to talk him out of another attempt. "They told me, 'You won't be able to feed your children if you carry on this way.' I told them I didn't care, I have no life here.

"As soon as the weather improves I'll be back to sea," he said, looking up at overcast skies.

Miriela Alvarez, 33, thinks a lot about New Year's Eve, when she and her 22-month-old son were so close to being reunited with her husband, who smuggled his way out of Cuba five months earlier.

"Sometimes at night before I go to sleep I think of that moment and wonder if I should have done something different," she said. "Should I have tried to get to shore?"

Her husband, who is in Key West, doesn't want her to try again. "He tells me to wait, to stay, not to do anything," she said. "He'll send money and try to get me there legally."

David Adams can be reached at dadams@sptimes.com.

Fast Facts: 

Stemming the tide

To stem the rise in human smuggling, the Department of Homeland Security recently announced plans to speed up the processing of Cuban family reunification petitions.

Under a new program the spouses and children of Cuban-American residents in the United States can expect to be admitted into the country within six months, down from an average of two years. Petitions by siblings would take two years, down from an average of 10-12 years.

"This may have some dampening effect on smuggling," said Sean Murphy, U.S. consul general in Havana. Officials believe "a significant minority" of people who resort to smugglers could benefit from the program, potentially dissuading them from trying again.

"These Cuban petitions used to go into a huge worldwide pool," he said. "Now they will jump to the front of the line."

U.S. immigration officials have about 14,000 petitions on file, covering about 40,000 family members. Twenty-thousand visas are granted annually under an accord with Cuba.

The Cuban government blames the smuggling epidemic on a U.S. law, the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, which affords Cubans who enter the country illegally the right to remain. The law has been applied differently over the years. In the 1980s Cubans who were intercepted at sea were brought ashore. But that changed in the 1990s when numbers began increasing. A wet-foot/dry-foot policy was created, whereby only those who reached dry land were covered under the law.

[Last modified February 8, 2008, 23:24:01]