The U.S. Coast Guard in San Juan said on Wednesday, November 11, that its crew repatriated 30 of 31 undocumented immigrants to the Dominican Republic after they were detained this week in the Mona Passage, west of Puerto Rico. One additional undocumented person has not yet been repatriated, the U.S. agency said in a statement.
The crew of the cutter Heriberto Hernández transferred the group to the Dominican Navy vessel Capella (GC-108) off the coast of Samaná, after the Joseph Doyle intercepted a migrant voyage in the Mona Passage. The operation took place in the early hours of Monday, November 9, when a crew of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection aircraft spotted a yola, a light, fragile wooden boat, of about 25 feet (8 meters) in length with an undetermined number of people aboard.
Coast Guard officials in San Juan sent the Joseph Doyle to intercept the suspicious vessel. Once there, officials described the boat as overloaded, with its waterline very low and in danger of capsizing. For their safety, the Coast Guard took 31 people off the improvised boat.
All the foreigners said they were Dominican citizens. The Coast Guard coordinated with interagency partners and the Dominican Republic Navy to complete the repatriation. The interdiction is part of the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) initiative, established through Executive Order 14159, 'Protecting the American People Against Invasion,' a government-wide alliance meant to dismantle criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations and trafficking and human-smuggling networks.