Border patrol officials in South Florida continue to encounter dozens of migrants.
As each day passes, more and more migrants continue to arrive at the Florida Keys' shores. And there are two men who have now made it their mission to help these migrants and their families.
“It’s near to me,” Alberto Arego said.
Arego is a journalist with CubitaNow. He said that for years he has seen families and friends from his hometown of Playa Baracoa make the treacherous journey north to the land of freedom.
“The people don’t have a future in Cuba. The situation now in Cuba is critical,” Arego explained. “They don’t have access to medication, food, it’s very expensive. The salary of Cubans is not enough to cover the amount of all the family, and they don’t have another way to live their life.”
As Alberto said, those who stay on the island are just trying to sobrevivir, or survive, which is why many leave.
The problem is, their families back home have no information on their loved ones' whereabouts or safety.
“The other day, I had 88 messages from Cuba, from the people,” Arego said. “And the people only try to know if their family is really okay.”
They give Arego names of people who made the trek, photos and any information they have. But Arego, who now lives all the way in Missouri, said it’s hard to help.
“Right now, in [the] Dry Tortugas, a few videos the work coast [Coast Guard] puts, have published, you see so many ships, and it’s impossible now to know where the ships arrive in the United States,” the journalist said.
It’s why he’s relied on Erick Diaz.
“Seeing the desperation and, most of all, seeing the joy once their family finds out they are fine, it's like a fire,” Diaz said.
Diaz is the founder of the account Barcos por la Libertad, or Boats of Freedom. He has been posting pictures of stranded vessels since August 2022.
A Cuban immigrant himself who now resides with his family in Key West, Diaz said it’s in his remote fishing spots where he finds migrants mainly coming from Havana, Matanzas and Pinar del Rio.
“There’s no signal,” Diaz said. “And they don’t have anywhere to communicate sometimes, and these islands are quite far from Key West, and nobody goes there for days.”
Which is why Diaz has made it his mission to go out and post as much as he can.
“My hope with this page is to be able to help all those people so they can find a way to notify the authorities [that] there are people stuck there,” Diaz said. “And to be able to notify their families of their situation and status.”
Diaz said when he finds a group of migrants, he notifies the Coast Guard or CBP. The individuals are then taken into custody.
He said he only expects the number of arrivals to grow and hopes his one-man operation can keep up with demand.
Back in December, US Representatives Maria Elvira Salazar, Mario Diaz Balart, and Carlos Gimenez, who all represent districts in Florida, asked the Department of Homeland Security to implement a system where family members and legal representatives can find the whereabouts and information of Cuban migrants at sea.
As of Wednesday afternoon, there has not been any update on the progress of it being implemented.
