Cruise ships rescue Cuban refugees stranded at sea

Two popular cruise lines rescued about two dozen Cuban refugees at sea on Monday, the most recent incident of many in the past week as many of the communist island’s citizens continue to risk their lives in hopes of sailing to freedom in the Florida Keys.

Cruise staffers abord the Carnival Celebration rescued five people having trouble on a small craft about 29 miles northwest of the communist island while the Celebrity Beyond saved 19 refugees from a boat in distress.

Once the refugees were saved from their stalled boat, the Carnival Celebration called the U.S. Coast Guard to take them into custody offshore, according to and video posted on social media by the cruise lines.

Capt. Kate McCue, the skipper of the Celebrity Beyond posted video of Monday’s rescue and said she turned her cruise liner around after the ship’s chief officer noticed a reflection on the horizon.

That reflection turned out to be the Cuban refugees, whose craft had stalled and placed them in distress. Once the refugees were safely on board, they were given blankets, clothes, food and checked by medical personnel before the U.S. Coast Guard was called.

“Thank you to all the crew who made this rescue possible,” McCue wrote on her Instagram page.

Monday’s rescues occurred as hundreds of Cuban refugees escaping the communist regime have been risking their lives to land in the Florida Keys, a pattern that the local sheriff has framed as a “crisis.”

This past weekend, about 300 refugees peppered the Dry Tortugas National Park, a series of small little atolls and keys. Those tiny islands are mostly uninhabited and are only visited by residents and tourists when they sail 70 miles south of Key West for a nautical adventure.

In the weekend incident however, authorities closed the park so they could search for Haitian migrants and Cuban refugees in furtherance of assessing the situation.

In another incident over the weekend, 160 migrants landed throughout the Keys, with about two and half dozen arriving in the state’s Middle Keys. At least 88 of those are refugees from Cuba, according to a tweet from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

U.S. Coast Guard and Border Patrol crews in charge of intercepting migrants and refugees in South Florida and the Keys have faced the most significant increase of escapees from Cuba in the past 10 years.

They have also intercepted many migrants from Haiti who are also facing poverty conditions.  

Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay expressed frustration with the U.S. government’s handling of the situation in a news release, and said there needs to be a better strategy in place.

“This shows a lack of a working plan by the federal government to deal with a mass migration issue that was foreseeable,” he wrote.

“Refugee arrivals require a lot of resources from the Sheriff’s Office as we help our federal law enforcement partners ensure the migrants are in good health and safe. This shows a lack of a working plan by the federal government to deal with a mass migration issue that was foreseeable, Ramsay added.

The U.S. National Park Service acknowledged the increase in a separate news release and also confirmed more Cubans are trying to leave the island.

“Like elsewhere in the Florida Keys, the park has recently seen an increase in people arriving by boat from Cuba and landing on the islands of Dry Tortugas National Park," the National Park Service wrote in the news release.