More than a hundred Haitian migrants arrived in a sailboat off the Florida Keys

MIAMI (AP) — A group of more than a hundred Haitian migrants arrived in a sailboat off the lower Florida Keys on early morning Wednesday, local and federal officials said.

The boat arrived about 100 yards (91 meters) away from a condominium in Key West at 4:00 a.m., and shortly after that law enforcement officers arrived to the scene, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said. Most of the 118 migrants were male, but the group also included women and children, the Sheriff’s Office said.

The landing comes as the Caribbean nation is struggling with a surge of gang violence that has killed several thousand people in recent years and left hundreds of thousands homeless in the country’s capital. Gangs have been targeting key public figures as well as hospitals, schools, banks and other critical institutions in Haiti, one of the poorest country in the Americas.

Tens of thousands of Haitians have left their country in recent years, with many arriving on the southern border of the United States, but President Joe Biden’s administration has implemented measures that have made it even more difficult for asylum seekers to enter across the land border.

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With the support from federal, estate and local law enforcement agencies, U.S. Border Patrol agents responded to the arrival of Haitian migrants this week, said Samuel Briggs II, the acting Chief Patrol Agent of the agency in Miami, on the social media platform X. Paramedics were evaluating people at the scene and a group of them were transported to a local clinic, but none had life threatening injuries, said the Sheriff’s Office.

The Biden administration has been sending Haitians back to their country since April, when, for the first time in several months, there was a deportation flight. At that time the Homeland Security Department said in a statement that it “will continue to enforce U.S. laws and policy throughout the Florida Straits and and the Caribbean region, as well as at the southwest border.”

U.S. policy is to deport noncitizens who do not establish a legal basis to remain in the United States.