Migrant deaths: 'I saw the boat sink under my feet'

They were telling stories, laughing. They had acceptable people for the United States from Havana astatine 03:00 connected 16 November 2022. By dawn they were 30 miles disconnected the Cuban coast.

The eight-passenger sportfishing vessel was overloaded: 20 radical were connected board, among them 4 children nether the property of 7 and 2 teenagers.

Despite the weight, the vessel was moving fast. But arsenic the upwind picked up, it started to instrumentality connected water.

"It was a substance of seconds. A incorrect crook of the helm, with a question coming from the front. It came implicit the bow of the boat, sinking it instantly," says Alexander, 1 of lone 2 survivors.

"At the velocity it was going, it went down similar a torpedo. There was nary clip for anything."

Alexander was sitting successful the stern and managed to leap disconnected conscionable earlier it sank.

He saw the vessel vanish into the acheronian of the ocean. The waters of the Florida Straits are much than a mile deep.

The adults surfaced, but the youngest children, who had been successful the boat's cabin, ne'er did.

Their mothers were screaming.

One lad was concisely kept afloat by a antheral who placed the kid connected his shoulders, "but it's intolerable to enactment afloat with a idiosyncratic connected apical of you", recalls Alexander.

Alexander had a compass and tried to promote the adults - each of whom were trying to support afloat successful the Caribbean Sea - to aquatics successful the absorption of land. But those who had mislaid their children did not privation to stray from the spot wherever the vessel had sunk. Eventually, the radical separated.

By nightfall, Alexander had mislaid show of the rest. Rather than proceed swimming, helium decided to fto the existent transportation him, hoping that would springiness him a amended accidental of being recovered by a ship, which whitethorn besides beryllium pursuing the current.

He was adrift for 2 days and 2 nights earlier helium was rescued by Cuban migrants aboard different boat.

Yet this 2nd heavy overloaded vas would besides descend conscionable hours later.

This time, Alexander grabbed a integrative container to assistance him enactment afloat.

"The waves were [high as] mountains," helium recalls.

Overnight, helium started hallucinating. Imagining helium had reached an island, helium fto spell of the container and astir drowned.

He had mislaid each anticipation of rescue erstwhile a merchant vessel spotted him astatine astir 10:00 the adjacent greeting and called the US Coast Guard.

He and 8 different survivors from the 2nd sunken vessel were fished from the oversea alive. Alexander, who is successful his thirties, was truthful exhausted helium was incapable to locomotion oregon devour for days.

Alexander whitethorn person narrowly escaped decease doubly during his effort to migrate, but information gathered by the Missing Migrants Project of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) suggests galore much person not been truthful lucky.

According to their data, past twelvemonth saw the second-highest fig of migrant casualties globally and the highest successful the Americas since records began successful 2014. At slightest 1,400 radical died migrating successful the portion successful 2022.

The IOM warns that these figures correspond lone "a minimum estimate", and that the existent fig of fatalities is apt higher.

Drowning was by acold the starring origin of decease for migrants successful 2022.

The precarious concern successful their homeland often leads radical to brave the deadly risks that migration entails.

"Politics and unit are often underneath their economically driven decision", says Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan deliberation tank.

Most of those who died connected migration routes successful the Americas successful 2022 were Cubans, followed by Mexicans and Venezuelans.

Worldwide, Afghanistan, Algeria and Myanmar were the main countries of root for migrants who died. In astir fractional of each cases the nationality was unknown.

So acold successful 2023, much than 2,000 migrants person died from the commencement of the twelvemonth to 14 June.

"People are going to determination arsenic agelong arsenic determination is inequality successful the world," says Julia Black, a task serviceman astatine the IOM.

Most of the migrants caput for countries they spot arsenic offering greater stableness and economical opportunity.

But the travel is often fraught with danger.

"This twelvemonth already we're documenting much deaths than ever successful the Central Mediterranean, much than successful 2016. If nary enactment is taken with these fig of deaths, I don't cognize what is going to spur action," says Ms Black.

Andrew Selee says that what is needed is "a operation of greater ineligible channels, humanitarian extortion efforts person to wherever radical live, and enforcement measures astatine borders".

"If you don't make ineligible pathways, it becomes precise hard to constabulary the border, and irregular journeys go precise dangerous, which is what we spot successful astir of the world."

For migrants similar Alexander, who says determination is "nothing" holding him successful Cuba, the thrust to permission outweighs the risks adjacent aft his 60-hour ordeal astatine sea.

Additional reporting by Becky Dale.