A Cuban man found alone on a wood-and-foam raft off Key Biscayne says he got lost fishing, yet family described desperation, and U.S. agents sent him home.
Enrique René Reyes Martínez spent roughly five days adrift before good Samaritans spotted him 16 miles east of Key Biscayne on October 12. The 38-year-old left Cojímar, Cuba, on October 8. The stretch of water between those points runs about 230 miles.
U.S. Coast Guard crews pulled him from the one-man vessel built of wood and foam. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations then processed him for identity, health, and next steps. He was swiftly repatriated to Havana.
Breitbart News reported that Reyes later spoke by phone from Havana with a Miami Univisión affiliate and insisted the voyage was never meant as an escape to the United States.
He told the station he never planned to leave the country. The open water nearly killed him anyway.
"I never had the intention of leaving the country, this is just something that happened to me that was very difficult and complicated."
Waves, a shark, and a vow never to fish again
Reyes described three-meter waves and a large shark while he clung to the makeshift craft. He credited his will to see his seven-year-old daughter, a steady calm, and devotion to Our Lady of Charity, the Marian figure Cubans link to three men once rescued at sea, for keeping him alive.
"I have life thanks to God because, who survives on a little piece of cork like that?"
He added that the drive to reach his family again carried him through the nights.
"I survived thanks to wanting to see my family again, my daughter, those are the things that kept me alive and I always said I wasn’t going to die at sea."
He also said he fought the seas around the clock and called the treatment he received from American crews “impeccable.” Once home, he vowed he would not go fishing again.
Survivors pulled from open water after long drifts are rare enough to stop the scroll, much like a Royal Caribbean passenger found alive after nearly a day adrift in another recent case.
Family said necessity, not a fishing trip
Before the return flight, cousin Gema Castillo Reyes spoke to Telemundo. She urged U.S. authorities to let him remain and said the stated fishing trip masked harder motives.
"He did it out of necessity, because of levels of desperation, because of many things that were happening."
She went further on the risk he took.
"Nobody takes that risk in what he did and survives to tell the tale. Truly, he deserves to stay [in the United States]."
The Telemundo account did not show evidence backing her claim about his true intent. Reyes stuck to the fishing story. The gap between the two accounts remains unresolved.
Maritime cases off Florida often end in interdiction rather than open-ended stays, including when border agents intercept smuggling boats off the Florida coast carrying foreign nationals.
CBP drew a hard line on illegal sea voyages
CBP Air and Marine Operations published a photo of Reyes alone on the foam craft and paired it with a blunt warning. Officials stressed the lethal risk of illegal maritime migration across the Straits of Florida and noted that people identified trying to migrate that way are returned home. Thousands have already died on the same route.
The agency put the stakes in plain language.
"This incident underscores the extreme danger of attempting illegal maritime migration. The open water is unforgiving, and these journeys can quickly become fatal."
Coast Guard crews have spent decades pulling Cubans from these waters. The same service has run large-scale rescues after vessels fail, including a case where the Coast Guard rescued 40 after a migrant boat capsized near Puerto Rico.
Communism’s rules make ordinary fishing a gamble
In Cuba, fishing is largely illegal. The Communist Party tightly regulates farming and fishing, the very activities that could put food on a table. The power grid has long gone without real maintenance. Those conditions sit behind the steady stream of people willing to risk the Florida Straits on anything that floats.
Reyes left Cojímar, spent five days on a foam-and-wood craft, and ended up 16 miles off Key Biscayne. He says he only meant to fish. His cousin calls it desperation. American authorities processed him and flew him back to Havana. Whether the Cuban state will punish him for the trip, or for fishing at all, was not clear at the time he spoke.
Search-and-rescue work at sea remains unforgiving for everyone involved, a reality also visible when the Coast Guard recovers debris from other vanished craft and must sort survivors from losses.
A man on a foam scrap can call it a fishing accident. A regime that criminalizes catching dinner keeps producing the same dangerous choices, and U.S. crews keep enforcing the return trip.
