Haitian illegals captured
By Daphne Duret
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 16, 2006
PORT SALERNO ? Deputies plucked the Haitian men one by one ? first wet, then damp ? from sidewalks, bushes and woods south of Stuart, near middle-class houses where parents had just sent their children off to school.
Each man had probably given a smuggler his life savings and huddled in a small boat on a journey from Haiti by way of the Bahamas. Within hours of their arrival on shore early Friday morning, 13 of them were crammed together again in a Martin County Sheriff's Office van.
By day's end, law enforcement agencies said they had captured nearly two dozen Haitian immigrants, including two women and three children, all presumed passengers of the same 26-foot boat authorities said unloaded in the waters near Sandsprit Park south of Stuart.
Two Bahamian men, 38-year-old Andrew Gates and 41-year-old Alvio Penn, were caught on the boat trying to leave from Sandsprit Park. Authorities said they were paid smugglers. The two are being held at a detention facility in Riviera Beach and face charges related to the incident.
"We usually don't see the boats," Coast Guard Petty Officer James Huffman said. "We'll get calls saying there are migrants walking down U.S. 1, but the boats are usually gone."
A man taking his children to a bus stop near Manatee Cove Road in the Rocky Point neighborhood told Martin County sheriff's deputies he saw three men walking in wet clothes just after 7 a.m. By 9 a.m., authorities had captured 10 men. Less than an hour later, they had caught up with Gates and Penn.
Martin County Sheriff's Lt. Jenell Atlas said the men were trying to navigate their way out of the St. Lucie Inlet on a 1983 Bertram boat. They told investigators they had come from the Bahamas on a fishing trip.
A six-pack of Lipton Iced Tea sat on a bucket of ice in a white cooler on the boat while investigators questioned the suspected smugglers Friday morning, but there were no fish. Two fishing poles, one unthreaded, hung from the back of the boat.
Haitian-American activist Marlene Bastien, director of Fanm Ayisyen nan Miyami (Haitian Women of Miami), say human smuggling is a lucrative business in the Bahamas, especially for Haitians who will pay hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars to get to America.
"You hear stories of people who sell everything they own," she said. "Sometimes family members chip in to send one person."
One man captured later in the morning wore an Air Jordan T-shirt with matching Nikes. Others wore Reeboks, Filas and shined black penny loafers with button-down shirts, ready to blend in once they got to shore.
Four men, two women and three children managed to make it all the way to Fort Lauderdale with the help of a cab driver, investigators said, but authorities there captured them Friday afternoon.
Last month, a boatload of immigrants was dropped off along the coast in southern Martin County. The bodies of a Haitian man and a woman believed to be either Haitian or Bahamian were found in the ocean near the Jupiter Inlet and on the beach in Jupiter Island.
Several immigrants were captured, but the smugglers got away.
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