Cubans on patrol for smugglers

Mark Potter Correspondent • E-mail

HAVANA - On a calm weather day, with blue skies and a flat sea, a Cuban Border Guard patrol boat made its way along the coastline near the capitol city.

Increasingly, the mission for the officers and crew aboard this vessel is to try to stop the hundreds of smugglers who come here illegally from Florida each year to pick up thousands of Cuban passengers and sneak them into the United States, often through Mexico.

Catching the smugglers is very difficult, because they typically arrive clandestinely in the middle of the night at remote beaches.  They board their passengers and then speed away on their high-powered boats in just a few minutes.

A new form of aggression?
On the patrol boat, Colonel Jorge Samper used a nautical chart to point out many of the hidden coves and islands along Cuba's vast coastline where American smugglers have come and gone in the last few years.

Samper is second in command of the Cuban Border Guard, and has been in its service for more than 30 years. He believes the increasing activities of smugglers— most of them either Cuban-Americans from South Florida, or Mexicans working for the Cuban-American traffickers— are a safety hazard and a threat to Cuba's national security.

"Our country is subjected to a new type of aggression," he said. "Hundreds of boats a year flying a U.S. flag, registered in Florida, that illegally enter our territorial waters and violate our national borders."

To prove his point, Samper showed a reporter three speedboats with Florida registrations that he said were seized in Cuban waters with smugglers aboard.  Two of the vessels were picked up during the same week after they broke down at sea, he said. On board each of the boats was an array of sophisticated navigation and communications equipment.

"Smuggling is a high-risk crime, because it endangers the lives of many people including children, women, the elderly— people of all ages who are caught up in this criminal activity," he said. 

The smugglers from the three Florida boats were being held in a Cuban prison, Samper added. One of the vessels has been converted into a Border Guard patrol boat and flies a Cuban flag now.

A dangerous but lucrative business
While the organized efforts to smuggle Cubans to the United States or Mexico aboard speedboats is quite treacherous, it is also extremely lucrative for the leaders of the crime groups.

On average now, a smuggling trip costs the passengers $10,000 each, although recently some passengers told NBC News they were forced to pay $12,000. The smugglers, they said, informed them the price had gone up, because of the increased risk caused by stepped-up efforts by the U.S. Coast Guard and other law enforcement agencies.

Very few Cubans on the island actually have that kind of money, so their fees are usually paid by family members in the United States. Occasionally, the arrangement is for the passengers to pay as much as $2,000 up front in Cuba, and the families to pay the rest after their relatives either arrive in Florida, or in Mexico from where they then head to the U.S. border.

Assisting the smugglers within Cuba are local arrangers and transporters who contact the potential passengers, gather them together, then drive them to remote coastal areas to await the arrival of the speedboat.

To avoid the Cuban authorities, the local organizers are very cautious, and sometimes go to unusual lengths to make sure the passengers they pick up are actually headed for the smuggling boats, and aren't state security agents.

One man who boarded a smuggler's boat, but was caught at sea and repatriated by the U.S. Coast Guard, told NBC News that he was instructed to await the transporters at a particular location.

"That day I was to be at a specific traffic circle wearing a red T-shirt and white trousers and holding a big bottle of water in my hands," he said. "There, a guy was going to approach me and ask, 'Are you going to the party?' and I was to answer, 'Yes,' and it happened just like that." 

With his intent and identity verified, the man then boarded a truck that made numerous other stops to collect a total of 58 people. Eventually, the ride ended and the passengers were then told to walk to a beach area.

"We had to walk 12 kilometers to get to the water and wait there for the speed boat to arrive," he said. "There was one guy who communicated with the speed boat."  When the vessel arrived, everyone climbed aboard and then headed north toward Florida.

About four miles from the United States, however, the engine failed, and the illegal travelers were all picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard and were returned to Cuba, he said, as is the case with most Cubans intercepted in the water by American authorities.

The experience at sea, the man insisted, was terrifying.  "It's terrible. There's nothing around you, just water and nothing else.  One moment the sea is completely flat, but in 15 minutes you see waves taller than buildings."

A second Cuban told another harrowing story about a smuggling boat that he had taken to Mexico.  Halfway there, the engines failed in bad weather and "horrible" waves.  For two days he and ten others drifted at seas until the currents returned them to the western shores of Cuban's Pinar Del Rio province.

"The speedboat crashed there against the rocks," he said.  "We jumped overboard, but I was the only one who managed to make it over the rocks.  Everyone else stayed in the water."  Before being rescued, he said, two of his friends died.

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