The multimillion-dollar trade brings more immigrants to U.S. borders.
Authorities propose targeting the money source: exiles paying for their
relatives' passage.
By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 17, 2007
MIAMI -- -- A multimillion-dollar human smuggling enterprise is bringing
thousands of Cubans to the U.S. on high-powered speedboats at a price of
up to $10,000 a head, and the flourishing business has increased the
number of Cubans illegally entering the U.S. by double-digit percentages
in each of the last three years.
More than 16,000 Cubans have arrived illegally this fiscal year, which
ends Sept. 30. Most arrived on remote beaches in the Florida Keys or in
Mexico, where they could enter the U.S. Southwest through official
border crossings.
Under a practice known as the "wet-foot, dry-foot policy" -- stemming
from immigration accords negotiated between Washington and Havana --
Cubans who make it to dry land can stay and obtain legal U.S. residence.
Those intercepted at sea are sent back.
Coupled with the 20,000 visas issued to Cubans each year for legal
immigration, the numbers arriving now rival the 35,000 who crossed the
Straits of Florida in 1994 to escape the poverty that gripped
communist-ruled Cuba after the Soviet Union disintegrated, ending the
billions in subsidies it once sent to Havana.
The mounting numbers have alarmed law enforcement officials.
"We don't know at 3 a.m. when we see a 'go-fast' boat running without
lights if that's migrants seeking a better life or terrorists coming
here to blow up a nuclear power plant," said Zachary Mann, senior
special agent and spokesman for Customs and Border Protection.
The smugglers' success using so-called go-fast boats -- light, open
craft fitted with powerful outboards enabling speeds as high as 100 mph
-- has convinced South Florida Cuban exiles who put up the money for
their relatives' passage that they are paying for a service rather than
committing a crime, authorities say.
"I get calls here in my office all the time with people saying, 'Hey, my
cousin Jose was supposed to have arrived last night and I haven't heard
from him,' " Mann said.
"The families clearly know who's coming, when they're coming and where
they're going. We have cases where families are waiting at the marina
for them to arrive."
Stepped-up Coast Guard and Border Patrol surveillance has netted record
numbers of go-fast boat operators and their human cargo. Authorities
have also seized 159 of the specially outfitted vessels over the last year.
Fifty-eight men have been arrested and prosecuted over the last 18
months, according to the U.S. attorney's office for Florida's Southern
District in Miami. There have been at least half a dozen deaths
resulting from erratic maneuvers by boat captains trying to evade
capture or from smugglers tossing paid passengers overboard to force
authorities to stop chasing the boats and rescue the jettisoned men,
women and children.
Some law enforcement officials and immigration policy analysts have
proposed targeting the people whose money sustains the thriving network
of smugglers.
"The bottom line is that anyone involved in a conspiracy may be held
accountable and may be criminally charged," said Barbara Gonzalez,
spokeswoman for the Miami office for U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement.
But Miami's powerful Cuban exile community opposes any such move and
appeared to have shot it down as soon as it was voiced by another
customs official last week.
"We aim to pursue and identify the criminal infrastructure, the owners
of the boats, the arrangers, the recruiters," said Gabriel Garcia,
deputy special agent in charge. "Our focus is on the criminal enterprise
itself."
The U.S. attorney's office also balked at the idea of going after the
funding sources.
"To date, we have not charged family members who paid to have their
relatives smuggled," said Alicia Valle, special counsel to the U.S.
attorney.
Camila Ruiz-Gallardo, director of government relations for the Cuban
American National Foundation, said prosecution of family members would
be politically untenable.
"Everyone in this community can identify with the desperation of
individuals who want to get their family out. We don't fault anyone
trying to find whatever vehicle they can to do that," she said.
"Not that we condone illegal actions, but how far do you go with this?
Do you prosecute someone who gives a family member money who then uses
it to buy drugs?"
Other advocates for immigrants also tend to look askance at going after
the relatives.
"One person's smuggling operation is another person's rescue operation,"
said Randolph P. McGrorty, head of Catholic Charities Legal Services,
which helps illegal Cuban immigrants obtain legal status.
A trend has emerged in recent months: More Cubans have been arriving in
the U.S. via organized smuggling operations than by homemade rafts or
other rickety craft that have brought hundreds of thousands here in the
years since Fidel Castro took power in 1959.
Dana Warr, a spokesman for the Coast Guard's 7th District in Miami,
described today's fleeing Cuban as more risk-averse than their
predecessors, who now bankroll what are perceived to be safer trips.
He speculated that smuggling operations are also thriving because
"people are just more willing to break the rules in both the United
States and in Cuba."
Anti-smuggling patrols have intercepted go-fasts carrying as many as 65
Cubans, said Luis Diaz, a Coast Guard spokesman. The vessels are
designed to carry eight to 10 passengers safely.
With the boats costing about $200,000 each and Miami sponsors paying
$6,000 to $10,000 for a relative's transportation from Cuba, smugglers
can quickly recoup their investment, especially when they're willing to
compromise safety, he said.
One of the go-fasts confiscated this month wasn't carrying immigrants
but had four outboard engines and extra fuel tanks, making its intended
use clear, Diaz said.
A cutter chasing the darkened vessel had disabled its engines with
gunfire -- an example of the increasing level of confrontation that law
enforcement consider necessary to employ against smugglers.
The 1994 and 1995 immigration agreements signed by Washington and Havana
were drafted after the biggest influx of illegal Cuban immigrants since
the Mariel boatlift of 1980 brought 125,000 here in a motley flotilla.
The accords mandate that at least 20,000 U.S. visas be issued to Cubans
each year to provide a safety valve for the overwhelmed Cuban economy.
U.S. diplomats in Havana conceded this summer that they were unlikely to
issue their full quota of Cuban visas by the end of the fiscal year,
blaming Cuba's officials for putting up obstacles to the import of
needed supplies, equipment and personnel to process the documents.
Cuba's top diplomat in Washington, Dagoberto Rodriguez, countered last
month that the U.S. government was trying to instigate another dangerous
illegal exodus.
Independent analysts of immigration trends blame both conditions in Cuba
and U.S. immigration policy for the mounting numbers of illegal Cuban
arrivals.
"What's driving the go-fast business is that Cuba is a Third World dump
and people are going to try to sneak into the United States any way they
can," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the conservative
Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies.
He also blames "wet-foot, dry-foot" for providing illegal Cuban arrivals
with residence permits, opening the United States to another potentially
huge influx and giving the Cuban exile community a sense of being above
the law.
"It's important that we rein in this sense of entitlement that the
community has now because Castro's going to die at some point soon,"
Krikorian said.
"And when that happens we're going to have an immigration mess on our
hands that will make Mariel look like a walk in the park."
carol.williams@latimes.com
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