From: The Orlando Sun Sentinel
January 5, 2020
Top U.S. Coast Guard officer warns against cocaine smuggling from Colombia and Venezuela and sees human trafficking from The Bahamas as a “criminal enterprise.”
Rear Admiral Eric Jones serves as Commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District, in an interview with the Orlando Sun Sentinel, below as follows:
Thanks for the opportunity. We have over 3,600 active-duty military folks and about 175 civilians, nearly 750 Coast Guard reservists and over 4,400 Coast Guard auxiliarists — the folks who do courtesy boat safety inspections. We cover all the missions of the Coast Guard that you’ll find in law except for ice breaking, and hopefully that doesn’t come to us anytime soon. The usual things are migrant interdiction, narcotics, marine inspections, recreational boating safety, fisheries enforcement and search-and-rescue. A lot of folks think we’re on that Coast Guard Island there on MacArthur Causeway. I wish we were, but we’re in downtown Miami. The three biggest cruise ship ports in the world are here in South Florida and four of the largest East Coast cargo ports. We’ve got by far the largest population of recreational boaters, almost a million recreational boats registered in Florida alone. So it keeps us quite busy.
Rear Admiral Eric Jones serves as Commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District headquartered in Miami.
Seventh Coast Guard District.
Policing the waterways
The Coast Guard will always be charged and will always be very, very wary of making sure petroleum is safely transported on the waters. But here in this area, like with coral reefs, we also stay very closely plugged in with the other living marine resources, whether it’s the migrations of the whales or the identification and safe capture and rehabilitation of turtles, especially when they get caught in fishing nets. It’s probably not a surprise but with COVID, when everyone’s told you can’t go to the restaurant, you can’t go to school, you can’t gather anywhere, guess where a lot of Floridians went? Out on the water. So we worked closely with FWC (the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission) and the sheriff’s departments to break up some of the big parties on some of the sandbars. But we also found folks that decided to take up fishing, and didn’t realize fishing in the National Marine Sanctuary along the Keys is illegal. So we’ve had to chase folks out that have been fishing illegally.
Looking at Cuba, ever since the repeal of the ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy, we’ve seen a huge decrease (in migrants). In the last in the last two weeks, we’ve had a little over a dozen Cubans that have landed down in the Keys in two different ventures across. COVID, like any natural disaster, adds political challenges that leads to additional instability in countries like Haiti, Cuba, and the Bahamas even. So we did increase our presence off the Dominican Republic and Haiti in the opening months and we still have an increased presence down there just to discourage folks from taking to the sea, because there’s an added risk now with COVID. Normally, when we embark on a cutter load of migrants, we’re taking care of them until we can get clearance to repatriate them. Well, not only can the migrants infect each other, they could infect the crews of those Coast Guard cutters. So we’ve tried to increase our presence to really discourage the flow. We still do see occasional human smuggling across the Florida straits from the Bahamas. That’s a criminal enterprise.
That 46-mile trip across from the Bahamas to West Palm Beach or Miami, that’s a quick trip, so there are always going to be opportunists who will look to get folks if they want to get to the U.S. The Bahamas is a relatively easy way to get in. So we work very closely with the sheriff’s departments, with Border Patrol, with air and marine operations over at Customs and Border Protection to patrol those waters and try to interdict vessels that come across. That is sometimes very difficult because there’s a lot of people out in the straits when the weather is nice. We’ll see migrants come across on dilapidated 24-foot center consoles, and we’ll see them smuggled in 65-foot luxury yachts. There’s no straight profile for that because generally it’s a business enterprise, or criminal network. If someone’s willing to pay, someone will bring them across the straits.
Know, know, know your boat
My biggest concern is making sure folks are prepared for being out on the water. In the past fiscal year, we had 3,316 search-and-rescue cases. We had $12 million property that was saved, 215 lives saved and 177 lives that were assisted — folks who weren’t in imminent peril, but we were able to help them. The ocean is a harsh mistress, as they say, and really doesn’t tolerate those folks that aren’t prepared, and with our tropical climate here, we all know that weather can change very suddenly.
You need to know the state of your boat and keeping it in good repair. We all want to keep our cars in good shape, but frankly, it’s much more critical that a boat be kept in good shape. You need to know how to operate all the systems on board. Folks run out of fuel because they don’t know how to check their fuel levels. Folks don’t know where their life jackets are, and when weather gets bad, that’s the time to put on a life jacket. It can be a little bulky and inconvenient, but it will keep you afloat.
Chasing illegal charters
We have a challenge with illegal charters. We live in a world where folks are used to Uber and Lyft, where someone can simply just take their car and use it to take other people around. That cannot be legally done on the water. If you are going to charter your vessel, you have to have a merchant license. Your vessel doesn’t have to be inspected by the Coast Guard if you’re carrying six people or less. But if it’s more than six people, you actually have to have the vessel inspected by the Coast Guard. And as you might imagine, some folks think, ‘I own this large yacht, and I could make some money on the side if I lease it out.’ Especially during times like the Super Bowl. Sometimes the owner of the boat will coach his passengers to not say that they’ve paid for passage.
Keep track of your kayak
If you own a kayak or a paddleboard, please make sure you label it. The Coast Guard Auxiliary gives out labels for free. They give out so many, we see people with luggage that they’ve put these on, which is not really what we want them for. If we come across a kayak floating out in the middle of Biscayne Bay, our presumption is that someone is with that kayak, and we will launch aircraft and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars looking for them. If we don’t know who to contact, that’s a problem. We see King Tides here, so if your kayak is just sitting in your backyard and you happen to live on the coast, that King Tide may take that kayak out there. Then we get to deal with it.
Sometimes the only reason we know we have a case is because we have a family member or a friend call and say, ‘He departed yesterday afternoon. He normally doesn’t stay out overnight. Something’s wrong.’ That’s the other thing we always encourage folks: Any time you head out on the water, have a float plan and leave it with a friend on shore so they know to call the Coast Guard if you don’t show up where they think you’re going to show up.
Cleaning derelict vessels
We are tasked by law to make sure that if there’s a derelict vessel out there, first we look to find the owner and make sure that the owner takes responsibility for it. If we can’t find the owner or the owner doesn’t have the resources to take care of the boat, we will use federal funds to get all petroleum products and hazardous materials off that vessel. Right now we have three tugs — one that sunk and two on the verge of sinking down in St. Croix — where we have not been able to locate an owner. We have removed several thousand gallons of oil and diesel from those tugs. Once those pollution hazards are off, however, then it literally becomes a state or county responsibility for the removal of the derelict. Boot Key Harbor down in Marathon is a constant area where we have that challenge and, as you mentioned, some of those ghost anchorages along the Intracoastal Waterway.
The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Legare stands on the flight deck next to about $390 million worth of in seized cocaine and marijuana at Port Everglades in 2018. Multiple Coast Guard cutters and Canada Naval vessels intercepted the drugs.
The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Legare stands on the flight deck next to about $390 million worth of in seized cocaine and marijuana at Port Everglades in 2018. Multiple Coast Guard cutters and Canada Naval vessels intercepted the drugs.
COVID and cruise ships
We did have to put a lot of pressure on the cruise lines to make sure they were following the guidelines of the CDC. Sometimes that was challenging. We also had to make sure some of the crew members that were foreign, and even Americans who needed to travel to other states, were provided safe conveyance to airports or to charter buses to get them where they needed to go. There are still 55 cruise ships steaming off shore. Being at sea is actually cheaper for them.
We don’t have the capacity, anytime someone was to get COVID, to fly them off a cruise ship. Obviously that would put our crews at risk, so we need to make sure, as the cruise ship industry comes back online, that they’ve put in all those protocols so if they do need to evacuate someone to a hospital that they have their own resources to look to first. Then in an emergency situation, the Coast Guard can certainly assist them. We’re also very much aware that the cruise ship industry in Florida represents half a billion dollars in annual business and over 400,000 folks are employed in that industry, not to mention all the industries that support the cruise ships.
A tall fixed bridge?
(Editor’s Note: The expansion of commuter rail service in Fort Lauderdale has spurred talk of the need for a high fixed bridge over the New River, or another tunnel beneath it, so that passing trains would not impede boat traffic. We asked Jones about both ideas).
We permit bridges. Anytime someone wants to build a bridge, the Coast Guard has to provide it a permit, and our No. 1 interest is to make sure that that bridge does not impede maritime traffic. Bridges have to be high enough. They have to be wide enough. Obviously, our No. 1 focus is commercial traffic, but we take all public opinions before rules are issued. One of our big keys has been working with the developing high-speed rail system to make sure that they understand their responsibilities to make sure the bridge can open in accordance with the current Federal Register. If any changes in the schedule happen, it has to be posted in the Federal Register and allow public comment before the permit is issued. We obviously can’t stop surface traffic to the benefit of the maritime (industry), but we’ve got to strike the right balance. We’re not going to be afraid, or shrink from calling folks out, and that does mean they’ve got to stay on their schedule.
A tunnel under New River?
It would make our life a lot easier (laughter). Obviously that would be one less bridge we’d have to worry about. But I imagine that keeping a tunnel this far south with the water table here would be an interesting challenge.
Hurricanes and climate change
The rapid intensification (of storms) has really been concerning. Even this year we were caught off guard a couple of times so as what was supposed to be Depression Sally came ripping across the Keys, it already had become a tropical storm. Watching the path of Eta, who could have predicted a path like that for a storm that formed in the western side of the Caribbean? Unbelievable. And so I think that’s one of the things that’s really been a shocker for all of us. I’ve been pleased that a lot of folks realize what storm surge is. We were concerned this year that evacuations would be very tough to effect because of COVID and the concerns there. We were fortunate that the mayors did not have to do any evacuations this year. The unpredictability is something where it seems like we have less time now to watch a storm come in than we used to, and that really means folks have to be really on their toes. Having your hurricane kits and your family plans set is more important than ever.
We are definitely seeing changing weather patterns. Obviously, I’ve got to be agnostic as to what’s causing it, but I grew up in a little town just south of San Francisco called Half Moon Bay. When I was a kid, no one wanted to live there because it was literally the place that stopped all the fog from rolling into Palo Alto. The sun came out for two or three hours a day. Otherwise you were living in what people call today the marine layer, but we call it fog. The average temperature there was 67 to 70 degrees. Today, there are days that are well over 85 degrees. It is a different town than the town I grew up in. We’ve got Coast Guard stations that are continually flooded because of the high levels of the Great Lakes. We are seeing those changes as we can and we are rebuilding to make our units more resilient, obviously.
‘Record’ cocaine seizures
We are definitely intercepting record amounts of cocaine throughout the Caribbean and some of it is traveling over the Colombian border into Venezuela. For folks who are desperate in Venezuela, moving that cocaine up becomes sadly a way to get some money. So we are definitely getting a lot of intercepts of cocaine. Our goal is to get it before it gets to Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, or even the Dominican Republic. But we also have the occasional busts that happen in the Mona Passage, trying to get into Puerto Rico, and even in the Bahamas. So we have had an uptick. In fiscal year 2019, our cocaine totals were about 52 metric tons, and in fiscal year 2020 that had more than doubled to 110 metric tons that we’ve got throughout District 7, and the Coast Guard itself got 42 of those 110 metric tons. We do count a lot, as you can imagine, on those partner nations, on Panama and Jamaica and Costa Rica. Colombia is a huge partner there. But yeah, unfortunately, that has not slowed down at all, and the demand is there.