U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations agents stopped a human smuggling boat with 15 people on board off the coast of Miami-Dade County Wednesday, March 11, 2026, according to a criminal complaint.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection file
Federal agents last week stopped a boat carrying more than a dozen migrants off Miami by shooting the vessel’s twin engines after the operator refused to pull over, according to a criminal complaint.
No one was injured and when U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations agents boarded the 25-foot center console, they found 15 people on it — from the Bahamas, Haiti, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, the complaint said.
The agents had been tracking the vessel late Wednesday night, when it was about 21 nautical miles east of Miami-Dade County. When the boat reached U.S. waters, about two nautical miles from shore around 11:45 p.m., the agents in their vessel turned on lights and sirens, according to the criminal report.
Although the boat’s operator turned around to look at the agents, he kept going, prompting the feds to fire two warning shots. After that didn’t convince him to stop, the agents fired eight rounds into the engines, disabling the boat, according to the report.
The boat operator, identified as Theron Don Mills, threw a cell phone into the water, and agents said he was holding $4,900 in U.S. currency and $1,000 in Bahamian cash, the report states. The complaint did not say where the boat, which is registered in the U.S., departed from, but most maritime human smuggling trips destined for Miami-Dade County and north launch from the Bahamas.
Agents transferred Mills and the 14 others to the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter William Flores. Agents with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations learned Mills is a Bahamian national who was convicted in U.S. federal court of human maritime smuggling in 2021 and sentenced to five years in prison.
Upon his release, he was deported to the Bahamas in January, according to court documents.
Three others on the boat also had U.S. convictions, the report states. The report did not state any of the men’s ages.
Oswaldo Sisa Heredia is a citizen of Ecuador who was caught at the Southern Border in December 2023 and deported in February, according to the report.
Joel Perez Matos, from the Domincan Republic, was convicted of drug trafficking in 2021 and deported to the Dominican Republic in February 2016, the complaint states. He was convicted in June 2017 of illegally re-entering the United States and sentenced to a year and three months in prison.
He then served four years in prison on a narcotics distribution conviction before being deported in August 2023, court records show.
Palo Alvarez Rodriguez was convicted in March 2023 of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl, heroin and cocaine and sentenced to five years in prison. He was removed from the country in October 2024, according to the complaint.
Mills faces a charge of encouraging and inducing aliens to enter the U.S., and the other three men face charges of illegally re-entering the country. Their first appearances in court on the charges were not listed in the docket, nor was information about their legal representation.
The rest of the people on the boat will be returned to their countries, according to the report.
Miami Herald
David Goodhue covers the Florida Keys and South Florida for FLKeysNews.com and the Miami Herald. Before joining the Herald, he covered Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of the University of Delaware.Â