Cuban migrants fly into Key West airport on motorized hang glider
By Paradise Afshar, Melissa Alonso and Zoe Sottile, CNN
Two migrants from Cuba landed at Key West International Airport in Florida on Saturday via a motorized hang glider, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.
The pair landed at about 10:30 a.m. local time, and were not seriously injured, the sheriff’s office announced on its website.
Both men were turned over to the custody of the US Border Patrol.
“There were no interruptions in service and operations continue as normal,” Richard Strickland, director of airports at Key West International Airport, said in a statement.
Florida has experienced an influx of migrants from Cuba in the past months, many of them making treacherous journeys by sea. In January, the Coast Guard returned 273 migrants off the Florida coast to Cuba. In September, the Coast Guard told CNN that they had intercepted more migrants from Cuba in the past year than it had since the 1990s.
While Cubans have been migrating to the United States for decades, immigration activists linked the recent increase to unrest, persecution and shortages of basic goods on the island.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Carlos Suarez contributed to this report.
