Four people are facing charges in what authorities said was a migrant smuggling venture that led to a high-speed boat pursuit off Miami-Dade last week.<\/p>\n
The four suspects were allegedly in a boat that was carrying multiple undocumented migrants heading toward the U.S. when it was detected about 21 miles east of Miami-Dade and heading west toward shore, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection boat crew found the vessel about two miles from shore shortly before midnight on March 11.<\/p>\n
When CBP approached, the vessel fled and authorities fired warning shots, officials said.<\/p>\n
As the vessel continued to flee, authorities fired “disabling rounds” into the engine which brought the vessel to a halt, officials said.<\/p>\n
On board the vessel were 15 migrants, including four who had previously been deported from the U.S.<\/p>\n
Taken into custody were the driver of the boat, 26-year-old Theron Don Mills, of The Bahamas, 39-year-old Oswaldo Sisa Heredia, of Ecuador, and 41-year-old Joel Perez-Matos and 33-year-old Pablo Antonio Alvarez Rodriguez, both of the Dominican Republic, officials said.<\/p>\n
All four are charged with illegal re-entry of a deported alien, authorities said. Mills is also charged with encouraging and inducing aliens to enter the U.S.<\/p>\n
If convicted, Mills faces up to five years in prison on the inducement charge, and each defendant faces up to two years in prison on the illegal reentry charges.<\/p>\n
The remaining 11 migrants were not charged and were repatriated to The Bahamas, officials said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four people are facing charges in what authorities said was a migrant smuggling venture that led to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124,373],"class_list":["post-197852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-miami-dade-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}