MIAMI — A multimillion-dollar human smuggling enterprise is bringing thousands of Cubans to the U.S. on high-powered speedboats at a price of up to $10,000 a head, and the flourishing business has increased the number of Cubans illegally entering the U.S. by double-digit percentages in each of the last three years.
More than 16,000 Cubans have arrived illegally this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Most arrived on remote beaches in the Florida Keys or in Mexico, where they could enter the U.S. Southwest through official border crossings.
Under a practice known as the "wet-foot, dry-foot policy" -- stemming from immigration accords negotiated between Washington and Havana -- Cubans who make it to dry land can stay and obtain legal U.S. residence. Those intercepted at sea are sent back.
Coupled with the 20,000 visas issued to Cubans each year for legal immigration, the numbers arriving now rival the 35,000 who crossed the Straits of Florida in 1994 to escape the poverty that gripped communist-ruled Cuba after the Soviet Union disintegrated, ending the billions in subsidies it once sent to Havana.
The mounting numbers have alarmed law enforcement officials.
"We don't know at 3 a.m. when we see a 'go-fast' boat running without lights if that's migrants seeking a better life or terrorists coming here to blow up a nuclear power plant," said Zachary Mann, senior special agent and spokesman for Customs and Border Protection.
The smugglers' success using so-called go-fast boats -- light, open craft fitted with powerful outboards enabling speeds as high as 100 mph -- has convinced South Florida Cuban exiles who put up the money for their relatives' passage that they are paying for a service rather than committing a crime, authorities say.
"I get calls here in my office all the time with people saying, 'Hey, my cousin Jose was supposed to have arrived last night and I haven't heard from him,' " Mann said.
"The families clearly know who's coming, when they're coming and where they're going. We have cases where families are waiting at the marina for them to arrive."
Stepped-up Coast Guard and Border Patrol surveillance has netted record numbers of go-fast boat operators and their human cargo. Authorities have also seized 159 of the specially outfitted vessels over the last year.
