US Federal authorities detained 17 Dominican migrants on Friday after their boat capsized near Puerto Rico’s northwest coast in the pre-dawn hours, with the US Coast Guard searching for an estimated 10 others still missing, Report informs via The Guardian.
Jeffrey Quiñones, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman, told the Associated Press that those detained told officials that a total of 27 people were onboard the boat that struck a rock and turned over near Shacks Beach in Isabela.
“There are no indications that they have drowned,” he said of those still missing.
The boat, known as a Yola, overturned about 69 meters from shore, a US Coast Guard spokesman, Ricardo Castrodad, told the AP.
No migrants have been rescued at sea, although he said the Coast Guard will continue looking.
The incident comes a day after the Coast Guard suspended a search for an estimated 34 migrants who went missing in waters off Florida, with five bodies found. They were onboard a boat that left Bimini, a chain of islands in the Bahamas that lies just east of Miami.
A lone survivor, a Colombian, was found clinging to their boat off Fort Pierce, Florida. He said he and 39 others had departed Bimini for Florida. Authorities have not released their nationalities.
