TAMPA, Fla. – The U.S. military and Department of Homeland Security have enacted Operation Vigilant Sentry in the Florida Straits as more than 230,000 Cuban migrants and 42,000 Haitian migrants have attempted to make it into the U.S. this year.
“To put things in perspective, we saw about 125,000 Cuban migrants during the Mariel Boatlift mass-migration in 1980 when Castro emptied the jails,” said James Judge, the Republican nominee for Florida’s 14th Congressional District and a former spokesman for the Coast Guard. “These numbers are absolutely unprecedented, and the fact that DHS and the U.S. military have enacted a last resort emergency plan, which has been rehearsed for decades, demonstrates the seriousness of the situation.”
