January 1, Coast Guard Saves Dozens After Deadly Boat Fight Near Puerto Rico

Wyatt’s Take

• Border chaos keeps spilling into American waters with deadly results.
• Cartel-style violence on a makeshift boat shows the real cost of weak enforcement.
• Taxpayers foot the bill for rescue missions that could have been prevented.

At least forty people were pulled from the water and two died after their overloaded boat flipped several miles off Mona Island, west of Puerto Rico, following a machete fight.

Survivors told Coast Guard crews that about sixty people had been packed onto the vessel.

The makeshift boat capsized late Sunday after the fight broke out, leaving many injured and forcing everyone overboard without life vests.

Survivors spent more than twelve hours in open water until a passing boat spotted them near Mona Island around noon Monday.

The alert allowed rescuers to save four people immediately, and the search continued into the evening.

Officials said it was not yet known where the passengers came from, but such voyages have become routine for migrants leaving Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Many travel the dangerous Mona Passage on small craft that often capsize in rough seas.

This incident is the latest in a string of fatal crossings.

In June 2022, eleven Haitian women and girls died when their overcrowded boat went down northwest of Puerto Rico.

Last week, authorities in the Turks and Caicos Islands stopped another makeshift vessel carrying sixty Haitian migrants.

Just a month earlier, two hundred forty Haitian migrants were intercepted near the same islands.

Gang violence has driven a record one point five million people from their homes in Haiti, with more than three thousand killed between January and June alone.

Armed groups now control roughly seventy percent of the capital and large areas beyond.

Wyatt Matters

Middle America pays the price in dollars and lives when Washington refuses to secure the border and enforce the law.