Tonight, Belizean authorities aren’t quite sure what they should do with
17 Cuban boat people who “docked up” on Northern Ambergris Caye
this morning. This morning at 5:30, 17 Cubans, 12 men and 5 women in a battered
iron vessel pulled up on Northern Ambergris Caye near Portofino Resort.
San Pedro resident Elbert Greer was the first to see them. At he’s made
a posting on the site Ambergriscaye.com saying that at 5:30 he was drinking
his coffee when he saw a small boat coming over the reef. When it got close
to shore, all the passengers jumped out and started to swim to the beach. Greer
reports that when they reached the shore, they began to kiss the ground –
because – he claims they thought they had reached the United States.
He gave them the bad news of where they were, and provided water and dry clothes.
They told him that they had been at sea for 20 days. He reports also that one
of them has an infected cut on his foot, and another fainted as she left the
beach. Greer has reported that there are only 13 and posted photographs which
support that, but Belizean authorities maintain that it is 17 total. They’ve
been handed over to the San Pedro police who have them in custody this evening.
And that’s where it gets tricky. The standing agreement that Belize has
with Cuba is that they should be returned, deported to Cuba. But generally,
inside sources tell us that it’s considered more trouble than its worth
for Belizean authorities and when it happens – typically those authorities
just help them fix their boat, give them fuel and water and send them on their
way. But because this one hit the media, seems they won’t be able to do
that. So the first priority has to be finding somewhere to house them that is
not the prison. And the last time they stored boat people at Camp Belizario
in Cayo, it blew up into a public relations nightmare. So now the Department
of Immigration must proceed with caution, and expects to move them from San
Pedro to some type of holding facility by tomorrow.
The Cuban Embassy had no comment and we could not reach Director of Immigraiton
Gareth Murillo.
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