Original subtitles

On this episode of Drug Wars, a search for drug smuggling is interrupted by a

sudden rollover accident.

But the mission is relaunched when the Office of Air and Marine is alerted

trafficking in the Mona Passage.

America's public enemy number one is drug abuse.

The decades -long war on drugs is a constant battle.

Drugs are menacing our society. With the growing demand in the United States,

cartels are moving an endless supply of drugs.

Positive for cocaine.

Fusion is taking you inside the drug war. To the front lines of Operation

Martillo, a multinational counter -narcotics operation.

In just three months, we witnessed over 15 tons of drug seizures, totaling over

$800 million.

This is Drug War.

On the previous episode of Drug Wars, U .S. Border Patrol stationed on the west

coast of Puerto Rico launched a search for smugglers coming from the Dominican

Republic. But after several false alarms, they found nothing.

We're going to be 10 -13 returning to the station.

About to call it a night, the team is surprised with a disturbing call.

One of their own has suffered a terrible accident. They quickly head to the

scene.

The night is now a rescue operation.

The officers desperately try to make contact with their colleague,

but there is no response.

Accidents in the field are rare, but very dangerous, and account for 31 % of

fatalities.

Fortunately,

the officer is alive and walking.

As for the vehicle, this high -tech piece of equipment seems totaled.

going to take Quiñones to the hospital.

He's going to be escorted by the FURA PD unit.

It's at a deep angle, and anything can send this vehicle rolling

down the hill.

Any bad movement without securing it, you have to anchor this vehicle.

Once the officer is rushed to the hospital, the team decides to wait until

morning to execute the vehicle recovery.

After removing the sensitive parts of the expensive surveillance equipment, it

will take two tow trucks to carefully move the vehicle without causing further

damage.

Now finally looking at the vehicle, it's a miracle the officer survived without

a scratch.

Most important, obviously, is that the agent that was involved in the accident

is fine.

So now be careful.

Agents know they will come face -to -face with deadly narcos from time to

but they must also endure the elements of working on a rough terrain.

When he was coming down the hill, the agent told us that the truck, he lost

control of the brakes and the accelerator.

We still don't know exactly the details of it.

It seems like at some point the wheel fell in there, and for some reason

when the truck kind of lost control.

So he thankfully thought quickly, steered the wheel against the side of

so he didn't have to go over the hill. If he would have gone over down the

cliff, obviously, who knows what would have happened.

But, you know, not only his life, but there's civilian houses down there.

While the vehicle recovery comes to an end, There is still no news from last

night's intel of the three possible vessels in the area.

But the search continues.

The Coast Guard quarter is out there. We have the Dash 8. We have the Coast

Guard artillery and Coast Guard aircraft assets.

They're still looking out for the information.

It's a big ocean. They use camouflage.

They use tarps, blue tarps. Sometimes it's hard to detect them. You know, if

they have any counter surveillance at all,

They can just go a couple of miles to the south,

a couple of miles to the north, and we may just miss them altogether.

A few hours later, the office of Air and Marine, also stationed on Puerto Rico's

west coast, is called to investigate some activity in the Mona Passage.

There's a high chance this is human smuggling, which has become a new way

drug traffickers to generate profits.

Okay, today's mission, we're going to pick up some migrants on Mona Island.

Attitude issues, they're going to be flexed and put in the back.

Other than that, for safety reasons, we're going to not flex them. Today

flying to Mona Island to pick up a group of migrants that landed there.

They landed, I believe, yesterday.

So they're stranded on the island right now.

and Department of Natural Resources had called us to request assistance getting

the migrants off the island and back to the mainland over here in Puerto Rico.

Good to go. That's my lucky hat.

Every week we have something to do.

We're in the Caribbean. This is the place. People need to go through Puerto

to get to the United States.

This happens quite often.

The migrants land there frequently, every week almost.

It's always an issue housing them, feeding them, and then getting them back

Puerto Rico.

Our bird's up today, and we're going to do what we can do to help them out.

They believe the migrants are Haitians.

Since Haiti's devastating earthquake in 2010, killing an estimated 316 ,000

people, There has been a dramatic surge of Dominican smugglers transporting

Haitians for $500 to $1 ,000 per person.

Their destination is La Mona, a small uninhabited island 38 miles away from

Dominican Republic, belonging to Puerto Rico, making it U .S. territory.

More than 2 ,000 Haitians have attempted the journey across the Mona Passage,

compared to less than 10 % of that number in the previous 10 years

While en route to Isla Mona, they spot a suspicious vessel and decide to

investigate further, especially due to the high -level drug trade in this area.

When we were on our way to pick up the migrants on Mona, we detected another

boat that our pilot thought warranted a closer look.

The vessel at 10 o 'clock, correct?

Yep, that's it.

Puerto Rico has seen a spike in drug trafficking.

Considered a U .S. territory, it's an ideal way to get drugs to America's

mainland.

But recently, smugglers have found additional revenue by illegally

migrants to the island.

Just because we were on our way to Mona to pick up migrants that already landed

doesn't mean that we can't encounter something on the way there. So the odds

actually pretty good you do see something.

So the mission can change.

you know, on the spur of the moment. So you just have to play it by ear.

All right, white contender -type vessel. T -top, black.

Twin engines.

And I see buoy balls and fishing gear on deck.

Nothing standing out on that vessel. It looks suspicious right now.

This is a known fishing area. He has visible fish. gear, I saw the normal

things a fishing vessel would have, a legitimate fishing vessel. So we sorted

that target. We determined it wasn't doing anything suspicious, and we moved

Now, Mona Island, the majority of the island, has a sheer cliff wall around

And soon you'll see. It'll come on the right side of the camera.

You'll see the wall, and there's really no way the migrants can make it up that

wall. So the only other places that they can land are on the south side and the

southwestern corner of the island where they have the flat beaches.

An even more dangerous hotspot for migrant landings is Isla Monito, three

northwest of Isla Mona.

Its sheer cliffs reach 20 to 30 feet high.

This makes landing on the island nearly impossible and a life -threatening

endeavor. Sadly, the price of freedom often becomes death.

Numerous fatalities occur.

The migrant vessels don't make shore. What they'll do is they get close to the

reef, and then they kick everyone off the vessel, and they have to swim to

shore. Now, they don't care if the migrants can swim or not.

It's not their concern.

On numerous occasions, they've threatened the migrants, either with

poured gasoline on the subject, and threatened to light them on fire if they

didn't jump in the water.

Or on one event which occurred recently, we identified the vessel prior to its

making landfall, and the smugglers attempted to drop the migrants off

The sea state was incredibly rough.

at least six -foot swells, and they attempted to drop the humans off on

And on the video, you can see the swells are really high, going up and down.

There is no beach for them to land on. It's a vertical cliff.

And a couple of the subjects had life vests on, the smart one, but you can see

when they grab hold of the rocks, it's not easy.

The water is sucking them out.

and two of them make it onto a little ledge, a little crevice that they can

in.

The smuggler realizes he's not going to be able to drop his load off there, and

he abandons, I believe, four subjects on the island and on their own. They have

to learn to cling to the rocks or not.

Then he goes to Mona Island, and he

drops the rest of them off right outside the reef.

You can see there's a young child in the boat that doesn't want to get in the

water, and they throw the child in, and the mother is frantically trying to grab

her child.

Tragically, in this case, the child's father drowned, adding to the rising

toll of undocumented immigrants in the Mona Passage.

The office of Aaron Marine received a call about a Haitian migrant landing on

Isla Mona, just 40 miles from Puerto Rico's mainland.

famous island throughout history for smuggling activities.

The old buccaneers and pirates of the Caribbean used to make landfall here.

Most of the migrants that land there don't know they're being dropped off on

abandoned island. Only a minority of the migrants actually know that. The Cubans

know that.

And they know that they're getting dropped off at the closest land point to

United States.

None of the other migrants know that. They think they've made it to Puerto

But this island has no water, there's no food source, there's no way to call us.

So unless they bring their own telephone or know the report to the DNR

officials, they're on their own and it can easily become a search and rescue

mission.

The 11 Haitians found Isla Mona to be completely abandoned, with the exception

of a park ranger from the Department of Natural Resources, who came to their

rescue. Now the migrants will be transported back to Puerto Rico by U .S.

Patrol, where they will be detained and processed for illegal immigration.

What's going to happen is it's going to take two trips to get you back.

So we're going to pull seven of you first.

So seven are going to go first.

So I'm going to take the women.

You got any minors, any young kids?

There's one, that one?

So the women and him, and who else will figure it out on the first load?

We're going to search you, pat you down, and then everyone's got to wear a life

vest. Let's start with this young lady.

We're going to use you to translate.

Right now, these migrants have no idea whether they will be deported or not.

Many are just happy to have survived the trip from the Dominican Republic.

But when they're in the aircraft, they're going to have to be buckled in.

Buckled in, they won't be able to hear. That's what the human protection is for.

30 minutes, we'll be on the ground.

This

island

is about 39 nautical miles

from the main island.

And they're the only source that the migrants have when they land here. The

people that help them.

They have the bare minimum here, water and some food for the migrants. And they

take care of the migrants until we come here and transport them back to the main

island. These migrants are also victims of the greedy narcos, who moved drugs

from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico.

Like any established crime organization, they've expanded their business by

finding another lucrative income stream.

For safety reasons, we have to do the two trips from Mona to

Puerto Rico. We can't overload the capacity of the helicopter.

This group seems to be in pretty good condition, yes. It doesn't appear that

they came from very far.

Where did you cast it off from? Where did you come from?

From Haiti.

From Haiti? Yeah. How long was the trip?

Yes.

You went to Haiti to Santo Domingo. Yeah. You stopped there.

Yeah. And then you freshened up.

And how long did you take to come to Monaco?

Two weeks? Yeah.

Okay. Did they tell you where to find the campsite? Did the smugglers tell you

where to find the campsite? Or were you just dropped off?

I'm work. I'm work here. I'm work everywhere.

I'm work.

After today,

this guy see me.

Okay. All right. Okay.

So they found you. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

The smugglers know the drill and make sure to drop off the migrants far away

enough from the island to not get caught.

The migrants are tipped as to where to find the base camp and, most

to deny having paid for the trip.

We

are

accustomed to hearing the same story, that they don't pay any money.

Office of Air and Marine agents landed on Isla Mona to pick up 11 Haitian

migrants that were smuggled from the Dominican Republic.

They'll need to take two trips to bring them all back to Puerto Rico for

processing.

The first group is arriving at Puerto Rico.

Here, U .S. Border Patrol will take over interviewing and processing each person

to determine whether they will be repatriated back to Haiti or allowed to

the U .S., depending on the story they provide.

What I do believe is that they do pay some money, maybe not a whole lot, but

they do pay some money.

They will all tell you that they did not pay any money, but we'll sort it out.

And with the translator, you know, the trip is already done. They are already

here.

Nobody's going to be accountable for this trip. You know, the person

for the trip has already returned back.

We will need your cooperation for the paperwork, and you have to answer

as truthful as possible.

If you give misinformation, you do know that in the later, on the long run, it

might affect you.

Considered the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, 78 % of Haitians

survive on just $2 a day.

Limited opportunities for education and employment create an endless cycle of

extreme poverty and violence.

It's safe to assume that this is the reason why the trend of Haitian migrants

escaping to America continues to rise.

Usually I'm obligated to let Haiti to go with my family.

I live in the U .S .A. What's going on with the Haitians is that they're still

under the temporary protection status that was given to them once the

happened in Haiti.

They all know that...

Depending what they claim, they will be further interviewed, and whether it's a

credible story or not, that's up to an asylum officer to decide.

As the

night falls, the helicopter finally returns to Mona

Island.

ready to transport the second group of patients and conclude this mission.

Right now, the migrants are going to go to the Border Patrol station to be

processed. It should be a fairly smooth transition.

They're going to enter them in the enforced system and see if anyone comes

with any alerts.

But as long as no one comes back with any alerts, they're going to be

sent to Miami, and more than likely OR'd, released on their own recognizance

pending an immigration hearing.

Although the Haitian migrants have survived their dangerous trip to U .S.

their journey is far from over.

Their ultimate fate is still pending.

They can get repatriated. They can get deported. But it depends on a case like

this. It depends who they are.

Yes, we have to find out if they're just migrants or if they've done continuous

travel before, if they are recidivists. We're here to do our part.

Most of them that I've dealt with here aren't criminals, the Haitians.

We'll just do it again tomorrow.

On the next episode of Drug Wars.

Panama's Border Patrol battles Colombian cartels attempting new trafficking

routes along an indigenous region.

And the U .S. Coast Guard and the U .S. Navy meet in the middle of the Pacific

to transfer more than 11 ,000 kilos of drugs.