Ocean patrols and narcotics playbooks: How a Florida city is tackling human smuggling

NBC News

17-05-2025

A human smuggler tells a potential customer in an audio message in Mandarin that there are now two potential sea routes for illegally entering the U.S. One is to depart by boat near the U.S.-Mexico border and then come ashore near Los Angeles. The second departs Nassau in the Bahamas by boat for the Miami area.
The smuggler says in the audio, obtained by NBC News from a potential smuggling customer, that enforcement off the coast of Florida has increased, but quickly reassures the potential customer, 'You won't get caught.'
Not so, authorities say.
Out on a labyrinth of canals in Coral Gables, Florida, police are on the lookout for fishermen who might be spotters or boats carrying more weight than normal.
Officials have been on heightened alert because the city's mangrove-shrouded waterways have become a landing destination for groups of Chinese migrants seeking illegal entry into the United States.
With the southern border a less viable option, these migrants have found Florida via the Bahamas to be a workaround. But authorities have been cracking down and are seeing a decrease in smuggling attempts over the last few months.
The number of Chinese nationals apprehended by Florida-based Customs and Border Patrol officers has climbed and dipped in recent years — 406 in 2020, 616 the year after, then 483 in 2024. But there have been no known smuggling attempts in the Coral Gables area since late January of this year.
Local law enforcement officials admit they aren't sure if that's due to increased enforcement, Trump's policies that have had a similar impact on border crossings — or if smugglers have simply gotten more sophisticated.
'We believe we have kind of a handle on our side,' said Coral Gables Police Chief Edward J. Hudak. '[But] where is it going to go next? [Smuggling] is like water. Water is going to go wherever it can go.'
The drop comes after two high-profile human smuggling incidents in the affluent city and another just off shore since the start of the year have resulted in the apprehension of nearly 50 Chinese migrants.
Another incident appears to have occured on Dec. 19, 2024, almost a full month before Coral Gables police made their first human smuggling stop. Surveillance footage obtained by NBC News from a neighbor's door camera shows a group of 18 Asian migrants walking into a waiting U-Haul van parked next to a waterway, as dozens of vehicles drive by. No police are seen, and there's no record of the apparent migrants or alleged smuggler ever being apprehended.
Overall, encounters at the southwest border are down 93% compared to this time last year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and smugglers have pivoted to sea routes off the coasts of California and Florida, experts tell NBC News.
More than 35,000 Chinese migrants crossed the southern border in 2023, but crossings have dropped due to stricter enforcement. Last year, apprehensions of Chinese nationals at the border reached a record high.
The Bahamas has quickly become a strategic departure point for many of these migrants coming ashore in Florida due to that country's lifting of visa restrictions for Chinese citizens.
'These human smugglers are being more creative,' said Leland Lazarus, the associate director of national security at Florida International University's Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy. 'They see one route dropping off in the southwest border, and they're trying maritime routes more frequently.'
Drawing on the narcotics playbook of the past
Police say it's a challenge to patrol the intricate waterways that snake through Coral Gables as well as the yawning stretch of ocean just outside, but they do have a past playbook. The area has been a smuggling hot spot for decades, first for drugs and now, it appears, for humans.
'We've just dusted off our playbook from the 1980s and 1990s, when the smugglers were bringing in narco narcotics,' said Hudak. 'But this is human cargo now, so that's really changed the game for us.'
Hudak says the sea-lanes used by human smugglers now are the same ones used for drugs previously. And the smugglers' knack for evolving and evading authorities also appears unchanged.
'There are ingenious ways to get narcotics into this country, and there are ingenious ways to get human beings into this country,' said Hudak.
Further communication between the smuggler and his potential customer offers a glimpse at how some criminals may be managing to stay one step ahead of authorities. Rather than using the traditional panga boats or speedboats to ferry migrants across seas, the smuggler says he's now using yachts.
'Small boats will get in trouble,' he writes to the potential customer in Mandarin. 'The big boat won't draw as much attention.'
Included in his message was a four-second clip of a docked yacht. The price for the journey, including use of the luxury vessel, was $35,000.
Law enforcement and some residents tell NBC News the human smuggling busts in Coral Gables weren't isolated incidents, and they believe many more migrants have been smuggled into the area without detection.
'This was not a first time on either one of these,' Hudak said, referring to the two smuggling operations. 'People have seen things in the past and didn't say anything.'