Immigrant Traffic Increases Along Caribbean Sea Highway

Strong winds and 20-foot waves tossed their rickety boat around like a toy in a bathtub, prompting passengers to scream with fear. Some vomited from motion illness.

Three gaunt women carrying rosary beads pushed their way to the middle of the jampacked vessel and began praying. An instant later, someone stood up, pointed to the heavens and shouted, “God save our souls!”

Then waves overturned the tiny boat, tossing 120 people into some of the Caribbean Sea’s deepest waters.

The horrendous scene, as recounted by survivors, has become a common occurrence in the Mona Passage, the narrow channel running between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico that has become the latest hot spot for illegal immigration to the United States.

Though this turbulent 80-mile stretch of the Caribbean isn’t a new route, federal immigration officials say these waters -- called el mar de los muertos or “the sea of the dead” by the locals -- have never been so filled with human cargo. The goal of the immigrants is to take the boats, known as yolas, across the passage to Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, and then travel by plane to the U.S. mainland.

The number of illegal immigrants taken into custody in the Mona Passage paints a picture of U.S. border crews being run ragged since the surge began three years ago. In fiscal year 2002, border control authorities reported 810 would-be immigrants taken into custody at sea or once their boats hit land. Three years later, the number has swelled to 6,537.

The Border Patrol says Dominicans are the vast majority of those entering the passage en route to Puerto Rico. Of the 1,589 illegal immigrants taken into custody after landing in Puerto Rico during fiscal year 2005, nearly 70% were from the Dominican Republic. The year before, it was slightly more than 80%. Cuban nationals rank second, with 690 arriving in Puerto Rico via the Mona Passage during the last two years.

The increase in immigrant traffic in the passage worries those who are protecting U.S. borders at a time when Americans fear terrorists might be entering the country.

Those making this trek in poorly constructed fishing boats are not only Dominicans and Cubans. Increasingly, as security becomes tighter at other U.S. entry points, the Mona Passage is also being used by Haitians, Chinese, Indians and Filipinos.

“We are getting all kinds of people in that area, and it keeps us very busy,” said Cmdr. Arthur Snyder, director of Coast Guard flight search and rescue operations in the Mona Passage. “Are we intercepting every one of them? No. But we are getting a lot of them.”

Once in Puerto Rico, Snyder said, illegal immigrants try to obtain photo IDs so they can fly directly onto the U.S. mainland.

He said an increasing number of women and children were attempting to cross the passage. Last spring a yola with 40 women and children drifted at sea for nearly a week before crashing to shore near San Juan.

“You try to crack down on illegal immigration, but what happens is they are pretty smart too,” said Victor Griffin, who supervises Border Patrol agents working in Puerto Rico.

Each group of would-be immigrants enters the passage facing a different set of dire political or economic circumstances.

Dominicans want out of a nation that is mired in poverty and on the brink of financial ruin. Since President Leonel Fernandez imposed tight budgetary controls this year to prevent economic collapse, the numbers of yolas headed into the Mona Passage have surged.

Cubans cross these dangerous waters seeking to bypass the traditional method of entering the U.S. along the Florida coast. Those sea routes are heavily patrolled by the Coast Guard, with the Border Patrol working on land.

Yuniesky Martinez Labrada, a 21-year-old Cuban, said he and 50 friends crossed into Haiti in the summer, walked into the Dominican Republic and then paid a smuggler about $150 each for a spot on a cramped fishing boat headed into the Mona Passage.

“The waters near Florida have too many Coast Guard boats,” he said, adding that he was intercepted there on a journey to the U.S. two years ago.

“A lot of Cubans would rather now just come into Puerto Rico, and go to the United States from there. But this was one hell of a hard journey, and there were times we thought we weren’t going to make it alive,” Martinez Labrada said from his steel bunk in Puerto Rico’s federal detention center.

Martinez Labrada said that “thankfully” he and his friends had only to reach Mona Island, a tiny speck in the middle of the Mona Passage, to qualify for asylum under the U.S. government’s “Dry Foot” policy. It states that those fleeing President Fidel Castro’s Cuba can apply to remain once they reach U.S. soil.

Most yolas entering the passage carry 100 or more people. Officials estimate only 1 in 4 yolas arrives safely in Puerto Rico. The others are either intercepted or lost at sea, their passengers presumed drowned.

After her rescue last month by the Coast Guard, Rosanna Jimenez, 38, recounted the sinking of the yola with 120 people aboard. “Our boat was too full, so we were doomed from the start,” she said.

“Some of us didn’t make it,” she added, making a sign of the cross while recounting the experience from a U.S. detention center in Puerto Rico. Officials did not know how many of the passengers died in the sinking.

While patrolling the Mona Passage from the air one afternoon, Coast Guard pilot Mike Goldschmidt said smugglers used 19 degrees north latitude as “Highway 19” because it leads from the Dominican Republic to an area just off Puerto Rico.

“Sometimes you spot these yolas, and the passengers are yelling and waving for us to rescue them,” he said while flying near Mona Island. “They’ve been lost at sea for a few days, and they’re hungry. Some of the water rescues have been unbelievable, with people being pulled out of the water in helicopters.”

One Dominican at the Aguadilla detention center, Judiln Delorbe Rondon, said the trip across the passage was the worst experience of his life.

“Life in Santo Domingo, [the capital,] is very difficult now, so maybe in a few months I’ll have to try this again,” the 19-year-old said. “Otherwise, how will I eat?”

Many of those arriving in Puerto Rico make their way to the San Juan neighborhood called Little Santo Domingo.

There, many stand on street corners each morning waiting for contractors to hire them for a day’s labor at pay well below minimum wage, which is the same in Puerto Rico as it is for the U.S. mainland. With Puerto Rico’s unemployment rate above 10%, manual labor jobs are scarce. Those who find a steady job often work long enough to earn the price of an airline ticket and then leave for the U.S.

“It’s really getting bad,” said Mario Mercedes Villa, who owns a small store in the predominantly Dominican barrio.

“Most people here know someone who has made it here from the Mona Passage.”