Migrant boat capsizes near Puerto Rico, leaving 11 dead

The Coast Guard said it heard shortly before noon that the aircrew of a Customs and Border Protection aircraft had spotted the boat and people in the water, about 10 nautical miles north of Desecheo Island.

The vessel is “suspected of taking part in an illegal voyage,” the Coast Guard said in a news release. Jeffrey Quiñones, a regional spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection, said the boat departed from the Dominican Republic but added that only two survivors are from that Caribbean nation. Those rescued include eight Haitians who were transported to a hospital in Aguadilla, a town in northwestern Puerto Rico, he said.

The thirty-one survivors were taken to Crash Boat Beach in Aguadilla, Quiñones said, while the bodies of the 11 dead were taken to the Puerto Rico Forensic Sciences Institute.

An increasing number of migrants have made these treacherous journeys by sea, fleeing countries where the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated long-standing problems of poverty and violence.

According to U.S. Coast Guard data, 1,527 Haitians, 742 Dominicans and 838 Cubans making “illegal voyages” were intercepted in Florida and the Caribbean in the year ending Sept. 30, 2021.

In Puerto Rico and the Mona Passage separating it from the Dominican Republic, 53 voyages were intercepted by the Coast Guard and its partner agencies between Oct. 1, 2021 and March 31 of this year. Some 1,308 migrants — including 940 Dominicans and 298 Haitians — were apprehended, the Coast Guard says.

The survivors include 11 women and 20 men, officials said, and authorities are interviewing those rescued to glean more information.

Castrodad said the kind of vessel that capsized Thursday is known as a “yola” — a boat with “poor construction, always taking on water, unseaworthy and designed to try to just get these people across in one attempt.”

The boats can be hard to detect, he said, and so it was fortunate that Customs and Border Protection crews spotted the emergency.