Influx of Cuban migrants shuts down national park in Florida - CNN

(CNN) — Dry Tortugas National Park successful the Florida Keys is temporarily closed to the nationalist owed to an influx of migrants from Cuba.

The closure, which went into effect connected Monday, is expected to past respective days "while instrumentality enforcement and aesculapian unit evaluate, supply attraction for and coordinate transport to Key West for astir 300 migrants who arrived successful the parkland implicit the past mates of days," according to a National Park Service (NPS) property release.

The parkland is astir 70 miles (113 km) westbound of Key West and is lone accessibly by vessel oregon seaplane. Dry Tortugas covers astir 100 quadrate miles of mostly h2o and includes 7 tiny islands. It is wrong the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

"Like elsewhere successful the Florida Keys, the parkland has precocious seen an summation successful radical arriving by vessel from Cuba and landing connected the islands of Dry Tortugas National Park," NPS said Monday.

The park's closure "is indispensable for the information of visitors and unit due to the fact that of the resources and abstraction needed to be to the migrants," NPS said.

"Concession-operated ferry and oversea level services are temporarily suspended" arsenic well, the NPS property merchandise said.

According to a tweet from Homeland Security Task Force Southeast region, federal, authorities and section authorities are "aware of aggregate migrant landings this weekend" connected Dry Tortugas.

Several instrumentality enforcement agencies "are coordinating efforts to retrieve those presently stranded connected the remote, uninhabited islands," said the tweet.

The information and nonstop fig of migrants being processed is unclear.

On New Year's Day alone, implicit 160 migrants were encountered successful the Florida Keys, according to a bid of tweets from Walter N. Slosar, a US Border Patrol main patrol agent. There were astir 88 migrants encountered successful the country connected New Year's Eve, said Slosar.

In October and November, determination were astir 14,000 Cuban migrant encounters successful the state, compared to astir 35,000 for the 12 months up to September 30, 2022, USCBP information shows.

Top image: Flying supra Fort Jefferson successful the Dry Tortugas. (Jeffrey K Collins/iStockphoto/Getty Images)