Five Dead After US Boat And Cuban Coast Guard Vessel Collide

Five people were killed when their boat, bound for American shores, crashed into a Cuban coast guard vessel on Saturday, Oct. 29. The victims included a 5-year-old girl as well. The speedboat from the United States violated Cuban territorial waters and was apparently carrying out a migrant smuggling operation, said reports.

While three women, a man, and a young girl lost their lives in the unfortunate incident more than a dozen others were rescued, said reports.

Cuban officials are blaming the US saying it “encourages” its citizens to journey across and then “allows” them to stay on its territory.

“A new event with a fatal outcome occurs as a consequence of the hostile and cruel policy of the United States government against Cuba, which tolerates and encourages illegal departures from Cuba by allowing irregular migrants to remain in its territory,” the Cuban Ministry of the Interior said in a statement.

Data released by Customs and Border Patrol [CBP] showed a record 224,600 people from Cuba presented themselves to its agents in the fiscal year 2022 which is an extreme increase from 39,300 attempts to gain entry to the US in 2021.

With the Caribbean island’s economy cratering, a soaring number of Cubans are attempting to reach Florida by making a treacherous 90-mile marine trek.

The boating incident was characterized as a “killing” rather than an accident by sources critical of Cuba’s regime while blaming the repressive policies and mismanagement of the government as the reason for people being driven away from the country.

Between October 2021 and August 2022, the US Coast Guard intercepted more than 4,600 Cubans traveling by boat — more than six times 2020’s total.

Migrants are flooding the U.S. from what the CBP calls “three failing communist regimes,” in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

Since the U.S. has poor diplomatic relationships with those countries, it cannot repatriate migrants to them, instead allowing them to stay in the U.S. while they pursue their asylum immigration cases — which can take decades.

Cuba is currently experiencing a huge economic crisis after the US tightened sanctions on the country and it was hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

U.S. officials sent condolences to the families of the deceased in the Cuban boat incident.