A late-night boat chase off Miami-Dade ended with four men in handcuffs and 15 migrants pulled from the waterway after federal agents intercepted a speeding vessel and brought it to a halt near shore, officials say.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida said the boat was first spotted far offshore on March 11, then tracked as it moved toward the coast. By the time agents forced it to stop late that night, 11 of the migrants would be headed back to the Bahamas and four people on board would be identified as having previously been deported.
According to NBC6, the vessel was first detected about 21 miles east of Miami-Dade, heading west toward land. Crews later found it roughly two miles from shore shortly before midnight. When U.S. Customs and Border Protection teams moved in, agents say the boat tried to outrun them. Warning shots were fired, then so-called disabling rounds were used to knock out the engine. Federal charges were announced Wednesday.
Who Was Arrested And What They Are Charged With
Authorities arrested the boat’s driver, 26-year-old Theron Don Mills of the Bahamas, along with 39-year-old Oswaldo Sisa Heredia of Ecuador, 41-year-old Joel Perez-Matos and 33-year-old Pablo Antonio Alvarez Rodriguez of the Dominican Republic, per NBC6.
Prosecutors say all four are charged with illegal re-entry of a deported alien. Mills faces an extra count of encouraging and inducing migrants to enter the United States. If he is convicted on that additional charge, Mills could face up to five years in prison, while each defendant faces up to two years on the illegal re-entry counts.
What The Charges Mean
The illegal re-entry offense is laid out in 8 U.S.C. § 1326, which generally allows for up to two years behind bars and higher penalties when prior convictions or other aggravating factors are involved, according to Cornell Law School. The charge of encouraging and inducing unauthorized entry comes from 8 U.S.C. § 1324, a statute that federal prosecutors frequently lean on in maritime smuggling prosecutions, per Cornell Law School. Those two federal laws form the backbone of the case filed in the Southern District of Florida.
Local Context
The Southern District of Florida has been here before. Prosecutors in the region have brought a string of maritime smuggling cases in recent years, including a 2024 indictment of a Bahamian national accused in a fatal human-smuggling conspiracy that underscored just how deadly these runs can become, according to a Department of Justice release.
Federal agencies including Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard often team up on these interdictions in South Florida waters, where crossings from the Bahamas remain a stubbornly regular part of the seascape.
In this case, officials said the remaining 11 migrants on the boat were not charged and were repatriated to the Bahamas. The prosecution will move forward in federal court in the coming weeks as investigators and prosecutors continue to sort through the details of the late-night chase.
