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MIAMI -- More than 200 illegal Haitian immigrants jumped overboard, waded ashore and rushed onto a major highway Tuesday after their 50-foot wooden freighter ran aground off Miami.
They departed Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and picked up three Cubans on a raft along the way, said North Miami Mayor Joe Celestin, a Haitian-American who spoke to some of them. There were no known fatalities and no injuries other than dehydration, Detective Delrish Moss said.
Miami police counted 206 immigrants, the youngest about 18 months old; Moss said they had been at sea for eight days.
The Coast Guard spotted the vessel about 2 p.m. and followed it for about two hours, spokesman Luis Diaz said. The boat ran aground near Hobie Beach on Virginia Key, just southeast of Miami's downtown.
"They were all over the front of the boat, the top of the boat, the back of the boat. They were all over it," said windsurfer Ovidio DeLeon, a witness. "Then they started jumping."
They ran into the streets, forcing closure of the six-lane Rickenbacker Causeway. Coast Guard personnel were seen pulling people from the water and throwing them life preservers; children were being transferred from the boat to people in the water.
Hours after they arrived the empty boat was towed away and the migrants were loaded onto five buses and escorted to Krome Detention Center in west Miami-Dade County for processing.
Border Patrol agents had begun interviewing the migrants, said spokesman Carlos Roches. "If they claim political asylum, we will process them accordingly," he said.
Unlike Cubans who reach land, Haitian immigrants usually are denied asylum in the United States and sent back to their homeland. The Bush administration changed its detention policy on Haitian refugees in December to discourage a feared mass exodus.
Immigration attorneys sued the government in March, saying the policy is racially biased.
I paticularly like this last sentance. Fuck racially biased. It is the law, and stupid fucking cubans shouldnt be allows to further infest this country. Close the fucking borders before we are overrun!!!!!
-------------------- It doesn't get any more serious than a Rhinocerus about to charge your ass. Posts: 1053 | From: Apple Valley, MN | Registered: Sep 2001
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