An alleged human smuggler ferrying 10 people from St. Thomas to Culebra abandoned the undocumented migrants on tiny, uninhabited Culebrita Island with no food or water before dawn Monday, Customs and Border Protection officials said Wednesday.
A man from Ecuador hoping to reach Minneapolis told CBP agents the smuggler’s gray, inflatable Zodiac boat hit something hard in the rough sea between St. Thomas and Culebra. Soon after, the boat operator ordered everyone into the water after claiming to see something in the dark, according to court records.
The Ecuadorian man said he feared a very small Indian woman in their party might drown as they swam through the dark, turgid water to shore without flotation devices.
“He expressed that he was extremely scared at this time because he did not know how to swim, could not see where he was supposed to go, and the sea conditions were rough. He further stated that no one in the group, including himself, had any flotation devices,” CBP officials told a federal judge in court records.
At around 3:55 a.m., a CBP Air and Marine Operations unit spotted Gregory Vega-De Jesús operating a small inflatable dinghy near Culebra’s Mosquito Bay, according to court records.
Vega told officers he was a former Culebra resident now living in Mayaguez. He claimed to have purchased the boat from an unknown person in St. Thomas for $11,000 earlier that morning and was heading home. Vega said he did not have any documents for the boat but CBP agents did find three mobile phones and roughly $7,000 in a bag aboard the vessel, according to court records.
Vega, who has a previous undocumented-migrant-smuggling conviction, eventually allegedly told the federal agents he had left the 10 somewhere “behind the land field” on Culebrita. The agents found them on the north side of east-facing Culebrita Beach at roughly 7:30 a.m., according to court records.
All 10 people allegedly acknowledged being in the country without legal permission. Five of them were from Ecuador, four from India, and one man was from the Dominican Republic. The Dominican man, Edwin Alejandro Díaz-Cordero, was the only one with a previously U.S. conviction, having been found guilty of possession with intent to distribute heroin in Massachusetts. In 2014, Díaz-Cordero was removed from the United States barred for life from any form of immigration relief, according to court records.
One of the Ecuadorian migrants allegedly told CBP officers his point of contact had been someone named Nano Car, who, for an $18,000 fee, helped him navigate to Panama, then the Dominican Republic, then Tortola, then St. James, then St. Thomas. The unfulfilled remaining legs of the journey would have had him in Puerto Rico, then the U.S. mainland.
Three others allegedly said they paid $3,000 for Vega to transport them from St. Thomas on a small boat to Culebra, where they would catch the ferry to mainland Puerto Rico before traveling to the destination of New York.
“All three said that they were taken by boat to an area later identified by agents as Culebrita. They were told to jump or throw themselves overboard into the water and to swim towards the shore. The three witnesses said the waters were rough and reached above chest level. All three noticed that one of the girls identified by the witnesses as an Indian national, short in stature, had trouble in the water and looked like she might drown. One of the male aliens had to assist her to remain above water and reach the shoreline that was barely visible. All 10 passengers remained there for several hours, stranded, until they were encountered by Border Patrol agents,” agents said in court records.
CBP Public Affairs Specialist Jeffrey H. Quinones said Wednesday all 10 were uninjured and did not need medical attention.
Vega was charged Tuesday with crimes related to migrant smuggling, Title 8, United States Code, Sections 1324 and 1327.
