We mark another Thanksgiving in South Florida with modern-day pilgrims dying at sea | Opinion

I meant for this to be a column about gratitude. But the dead bodies got the best of me.

This Thanksgiving, in a country resigned to living with mass gun killings, the tragic deaths at sea of Cubans seeking to reach Florida’s shores are barely on the public radar.

Faceless, nameless people, these souls, these pilgrims for whom the voyage has gone horribly awry.

In Florida, a state where the governor turns poor, disoriented immigrants already here into political pawns to manipulate at whim — and easily wins reelection — sympathy for refugees may be at an all-time low.

No, this isn’t the same America whose eyes were glued to the miracle rescue at sea of a Cuban child on Thanksgiving Day 1999.

Back then, Elián González became a household name. Today’s pilgrims from Cuba and Haiti are adrift and dying at sea in anonymity.

Cubans and Haitians

Take note of the U.S. Coast Guard’s tally from just one boatload.

Four people presumed lost at sea, six more confirmed dead, as of this writing.

The stunning search-and-rescue operation, now abandoned, took place after a homemade boat full of Cubans capsized last weekend 50 miles off Little Torch Key. The rest, nine people, were rescued with assistance from a Disney cruise ship in the vicinity.

The Coast Guard can hardly keep up with the number of unworthy vessels showing up at sea.

As crews were still engaged in searching for more Cuban victims, another vessel, struggling in stormy seas and high winds off the Keys, came into view Monday, a wooden sailboat carrying more than a dozen Haitian immigrants — with babies on board.

The sailboat ran into a sandbar and, in the chaos that ensued, people jumped into the water in the dark. Another dramatic rescue for Coast Guard crews and a scramble by local police on land and helicopter to round up the migrants.

No deaths were reported this time, thankfully.

In both cases, the valiant efforts of the Coast Guard battling rough seas and strong winds to save lives must be recognized. Every time they go out there, they risk it all, playing both the role of rescuers and police of the seas.

What will happen to the rescued now, both Cuban and Haitian — repatriation or bids for asylum?

No one seems to know.

And what is the Biden administration going to do about the record-breaking, never-ending exodus from Cuba and Haiti?

Ditto.

“When you hear about that, please let me know,” a Coast Guard member tells me.

It’s a half-joke, but it’s also a genuine request.

A heart of stone at Thanksgiving, too

Outside the election cycle, desperate people throwing themselves to the whims of the sea seems to be a no-man’s land, politically. Judging by how many dead are now acceptable to the American public numbed to mass killings, I don’t want to even ask: When do we reach a high enough number of dead at sea?

And no, the answer isn’t asking the Cuban government to intervene. Look at what happened when they did in October. They rammed a cruiser into a U.S.-bound speedboat and killed a 5-year-old child, same age as Eliancito, over whom Fidel Castro waged a custody fight.

Cuba’s coastal police don’t have the ethics, integrity or pathos of the U.S. Coast Guard. They’re only another brand of oppressor. To them, the life of a dissenter has no value.

But what about us?

Political gridlock keeps our immigration system in shambles, and people reaching for the American Dream enter through doors left ajar and subject to luck and circumstance. Political convenience keeps solutions at bay. And the anonymous immigrant, celebrated in nation-founding history, makes the best of scapegoats for our problems today.

This America, this Florida, this Miami reconfigured by Trumpism has a heart of stone and selective memory of its own heritage.

And so, even on the holiday when we celebrate being a nation of immigrants and break bread to commemorate the bountiful harvest the natives are said to have shared with newcomers, we look away from the human drama unfolding at our doorstep.

Back when we had a soul, when we weren’t indifferent to the struggles of others, the country mourned the loss of Elián’s mother, Elizabeth Broton, who had drowned along with 11 other rafters. Before she slipped out of sight into the dark waters, she left her 5-year-old clinging to an inner tube. Fishermen found him three miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale.

Those lives lost now also have names, dreams, histories.

Let’s at least tell their stories — and say a prayer for them at our tables.

That said, I want to shout to the winds my gratitude to my readers. They care.

They keep me company year-round, champion me more than I deserve, keep me honest when I miss the mark and challenge me with intelligence.

They are there when the lights go out in other parts of my life.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers. I’m grateful for all of you.