The U.S. Coast Guard reported on Monday that it has rescued at least 40 individuals in open waters following the capsizing of a vessel several miles from a tiny, uninhabited island west of Puerto Rico. According to the agency, two people were found dead, while survivors indicated that approximately 60 people were on board the makeshift boat when it went down.
Rescue operations were still underway as of Monday evening. The incident occurred late Sunday after a fight broke out on the boat, during which people were reportedly severely injured by a machete. This violence led the group to jump into the water without life vests. The survivors endured more than 12 hours in the water before a passing boat near Mona Island spotted them around noon on Monday and alerted authorities, which led to the rescue of four people at that time.
A U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson stated she did not have information regarding the nationalities of the passengers. The Mona Passage, which separates Hispaniola—the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic—from Puerto Rico, is a common route for migrants fleeing poverty and violence.
This incident follows a history of similar tragedies in the region. In June 2022, 11 Haitian women and girls were buried in Puerto Rico after their overloaded boat capsized northwest of the territory. More recently, authorities in the Turks and Caicos Islands detained a boat carrying 60 Haitian migrants last week, while another 240 migrants from Haiti were detained near that same archipelago in June.
The current maritime crisis occurs against a backdrop of severe instability in Haiti, where gang violence has displaced a record 1.5 million people. U.N. statistics indicate that more than 3,050 people were reported killed in Haiti between January and June, with armed groups controlling an estimated 70% of Port-au-Prince and significant swaths of land in the country's central region and beyond.
