Jaime Francisco Mota Morla is one of thousands of Dominicans who have risked death on rough seas to join a huge wave of illegal migrants trying to reach Puerto Rico and escape their country's worst economic crisis in decades.
At least 60 have died this year, and authorities say the number is probably higher. But Mota, 25, says he wasn't deterred by the danger when he left his home town of San Pedro de Macoris.
PHOTO: AP
"Things are hard there," said Mota, leaning against a chain-link fence at the US Border Patrol headquarters in this northwestern coastal town where he was being held.
"I wanted to find a better life," Mota said.
The Dominican Republic's annual inflation rate is near 30 percent, unemployment is at 16 percent and the country of 8.8 million is plagued by blackouts. A US dollar that cost 16 Dominican pesos in the 1990s now costs 45.
One result is that more than 7,000 Dominican migrants have been detained in Puerto Rico since Oct. 1, double the number for the previous 12 months.
At least 60 people have been confirmed dead in the Mona Passage, a shark-infested 160km-wide channel where strong Atlantic and Caribbean currents meet.
There were nine confirmed migrant deaths in the Mona Passage last year, said Lieutenant Eric Willis, a US Coast Guard spokesman.
But the actual numbers are likely higher.
"Hundreds of people have probably lost their lives in the last several months," said Willis.
Last Wednesday, Coast Guard patrols were searching for 70 migrants reported missing.
"We receive reports at least on a weekly basis of family members claiming that their loved ones have not made it to Puerto Rico," Willis said.
"That is why we have a constant presence in the Mona Passage, knowing that people are making these dangerous trips in unseaworthy vessels," he said.
The US State Department has tried to stem the flow by sponsoring ads on Dominican billboards, beer coasters and taxis. One poster shows coffins floating at sea and the warning, in Spanish: "These illegal trips are trips to death."
Also, some smugglers are callous enough to simply throw troublesome migrants overboard, said Border Patrol spokesman Victor Colon, citing interviews with captured migrants.
Mota, who is single, lived with his unemployed mother and earned US$350 a month doing construction jobs and transporting passengers on a moped. He said he wanted to study systems engineering, but couldn't afford to enroll at a university.
He made the two-day trip to Puerto Rico's west coast with no life jacket or food, crammed into a small boat with 20 other migrants, vomiting twice on the choppy waves.
His quest for a new life ended July 29 when a Border Patrol agent caught him at a pay phone outside a convenience store in the southwestern town of Boqueron. Two other migrants who had traveled with Mota were detained earlier in the day. The others escaped.
Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico, supported by more than US$14 billion in annual US federal funds, is a logical first choice for poor Dominicans willing to do undesirable jobs like construction. Authorities estimate 200,000 Dominicans live on the island of 4 million.
Despite stepped-up patrols, authorities reckon that 30 percent of migrant voyages make it to Puerto Rico, Willis said. Smugglers paint their boats blue as camouflage and cover outboard motors with wet towels so they won't show up on infrared screens, Colon said.
Migrants sometimes hide in coastal thickets for several days, waiting until all is clear. On a recent patrol in Boqueron, Border Patrol agent Glenn Torres hacked through dense brush with a machete in sticky heat.
Mota was flown home in time for the Aug. 16 inauguration of Leonel Fernandez as the new Dominican president. Fernandez promises to replicate his previous term in office, in the 1990s, when the economy grew by 8 percent a year.
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