Bahamian authorities continue search and recovery after Haitian migrant boat capsize

Bahamian search and recovery efforts for missing Haitian migrants after a boat capsizing killed 17 Miami-bound migrants continued in waters off New Providence on Tuesday as the Bahamian government received help from U.S. authorities.

U.S. Homeland Security Investigation agents arrived in the Bahamas Monday and are working with local authorities in the migrant smuggling probe. Wire payments between Haitian relatives in the United States and migrant smugglers in Haiti and the Bahamas could be the foundation for a criminal federal case in Miami.

Fifteen women, a young girl and a man are confirmed to have died in the tragedy on Sunday. Another 25 people have been rescued, two of them Bahamian nationals now in police custody. The country’s police announced Monday that a third Bahamian was later arrested in relation to the incident in a New Providence home.

Authorities are still investigating the incident. Among the unanswered questions is whether all the immigrants onboard were Haitian and their legal status in the Bahamas.

Two of the tragedy’s survivors were authorized to work in the Bahamas, according to local outlet The Nassau Guardian. The Bahamian newspaper quoted the country’s immigration minister, Keith Bell, saying that their permits will be revoked “and they will likely face repatriation.”

“We want to be human about what we do and how we do things given the tragedy, but at the same time we have laws to enforce,” he said.

Bell did not return an interview request from the Miami Herald.

Bahamian authorities have appealed to members of the Haitian community and the general public to help them identify the deceased as well as others who might have been on the boat. But many are reluctant to do so.

Bahamas-based Pastor Jean Paul Charles, president of the League of Haitian Pastors, told the Miami Herald that his organization extended its “heartfelt sympathies” to all those who had lost loved ones in the tragedy at sea. He said that the family members and loved ones are not yet willing to come forward, fearing legal repercussions.

Charles and others have been unable to speak with the tragedy’s survivors, who are being held at the Carmichael Road Detention Center in Nassau.

“We want to go talk to them, pray for them, comfort them,” said the pastor, who has lived in the Bahamas for 26 years.

Bahamian authorities first received reports of a boat capsizing near the entrance of Nassau Harbor at 1:17 a.m. Sunday. They found the half-sunk, 30-foot speedboat seven miles from the island of New Providence, the most populous island in the Bahamian archipelago.

“The hull of the boat is the same color blue of the sea, so it was difficult at night to identify the vessel.... Divers eventually went down, and that’s where they recovered the 17 bodies,” said police commissioner Clayton Fernander at a recent press conference describing the scene the rescue team found. “There was one female who was still alive, was up in the air pocket in the hull.”

It is the second such capsizing to occur in less than three months. In mid-May, a U.S.-bound boat that had left the Dominican Republic carrying an estimated 60 to 75 people, nearly all Haitian, capsized close to Puerto Rico’s western shores. Eleven people, all Haitian women, died. Suspected smugglers from the Dominican Republic were arrested and charged with human smuggling and could spend life in prison if convicted.