Who’s to say ANYBODY who wanted to couldn’t enter the country the same way?

NAPLES, Fla. - (KRT) - Cuban migrant smugglers, who for years have brought people from the island to remote spots in the Keys, have adopted a new strategy to get around the heavily patrolled waters off the Keys:
Launch their smuggling missions from Collier County in Southwest Florida.
The cat-and-mouse shift has everyone, including the Coast Guard and Collier
County sheriff’s deputies, trying to keep up.
”Criminals look to take advantage of vulnerabilities,” said Lt. Tony
Russell, spokesman for the Coast Guard in Miami. “We are working hard to minimize those. The Florida Straits covers from Cay Sal in the east, to the
Marquesas in the west. That’s 25,000 square miles of ocean.”
The increase in smuggling from Collier has been accompanied by another
tactic: dropping off the Cuban migrants in the remote Dry Tortugas and
Marquesas Islands well off Key West, rather than the Keys mainland. Both are
closer to Cuba and harder to patrol. Collier County, with hundreds of miles of coastline and little full-time presence by agencies like the Coast Guard, Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is ideal for smugglers hoping to make an unobtrusive departure and a quick return. The downside: The round trip to Cuba is
longer, so many must rendezvous with refueling boats at sea.
Federal and local law enforcement officials say the smugglers trailer their
boats from South Florida across Alligator Alley to boat ramps that dot the
Southwest Florida coastline, from Everglades City to Fort Myers in Lee
County. From there, they make the trip to Cuba, drop the migrants off in the
remote islands off the Keys, then return to the Southwest Florida ramps and
trailer the boats to Miami.

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