Five people are missing, one is dead and four are alive after a boat with nine people aboard capsized off Florida’s St. Lucie Inlet. By the numbers, that is the ledger the United States Coast Guard closed on April 15, 2025, when it suspended the search for the five migrants who vanished in what officials called a suspected failed smuggling venture.
The figures came together over three days. The boat left Bimini on a Friday with nine aboard and flipped early the next morning, one survivor told the Coast Guard. Crews rescued four people that Sunday and recovered one who had died. A good Samaritan reported the overturned boat with four people still clinging to it.
The effort behind the search was not small. Crews worked by air and sea for about seven hours and swept more than 1,240 square miles before the Coast Guard made the call to stop.
“The decision to suspend a search is always difficult and never taken lightly,” said Chief Warrant Officer Edgardo Insignares, a search and rescue mission coordinator for Coast Guard Sector Miami. “Smugglers routinely exploit vulnerable aliens for profit while putting their lives at risk aboard overloaded and unseaworthy vessels. These dangerous and illegal voyages must not be attempted.”
The bottom line is that the venture is now a criminal case. Homeland Security Investigations in Fort Pierce is looking into the failed smuggling venture, according to a post from HSI Miami, and Insignares ended where the Coast Guard always does: “Don’t take the sea.”
Sources
- File:2025 St. Lucie Inlet boat sinking.png – Wikimedia Commons
- Search suspended for 5 missing people after boat capsized in suspected failed smuggling venture | WFLA
