Migrants are seen as “human commodities” and routinely extorted, kidnapped or forced into sex trafficking by larger smuggling networks, Salisbury said. Maritime smuggling of people to South Florida shot up by 400 percent last year over the previous fiscal year, according to Anthony Salisbury, the special agent in charge of the Homeland Security Investigations Miami field office. They buy a plane ticket, land on an island and look for a boat. With its relatively lenient visa requirements, the Bahamas now draws migrants of means from around the world, from as far away as China, Cameroon and Iraq. It’s no longer only people from the Caribbean who use this route to make a run for the United States. Ongoing chaos and violence in Haiti and a crippling economic crisis in Cuba are powering a new surge of people who try to slip into Florida by sea. The Commonwealth’s 700 islands, porous borders and proximity to the United States have for decades made it both a destination and a transit point for migrants, predominantly Haitians. The islands were a haven for pirates plundering gold in the 1600s, rum runners bootlegging liquor during Prohibition and “Cocaine Cowboys” ferrying drugs into Florida in the 1980s.Īs one put it: “All that changed was the cargo.” No one wore a life jacket.įor centuries, the Bahamas has been a smuggler’s paradise. In the darkness and panic, some on board began spilling over the sides of the boat and into the sea. Battered by rough waters about six miles from the harbor, it began to take on water. All hoped to reach the promised land for thousands of migrants crossing these waters: Florida. Some had spent years living in the Bahamas. Instead, dozens of Haitians huddled together on board. The boat, described by an investigator as a “pleasure craft,” was supposed to carry only 20 people. It slid away from a rocky beach hidden behind a dilapidated former nightclub known as the Sand Trap, which sat beside a brothel and a block from a building once operated by the U.S.
It was here that a 33-foot boat named Bare Ambition set out after midnight one day last summer. NASSAU, Bahamas - By day, Jet Ski operators zip through the turquoise waters around Arawak Cay, where tourists dine on conch salads from brightly painted wooden shacks.īut by night, inky blue waves become a covert gateway through the vast Caribbean to the United States.
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