A local Florida news station interviewed a couple who said they were forced to pay to have a Cuban boat removed from their property, or risk a felony.
One Florida homeowner, Jack Bartkus, explained that he was left to deal with the seacraft after “about 20 people that rode on this boat from Cuba and [the government] took the people into custody [but] they didn’t do anything with the boat.”
“They left it here and just discarded it,” Bartkus said. “So it became my problem.”
“It’s unfair. Totally unfair,” he added.
Jack Bartkus also told Miami news channel WSVN that he was forced to pay to “clean and sterilize the boat,” a process that cost him at least “$2,500.”
“There’s diesel fuel on there,” he said. “You can’t have an oil spill and to have this thing floating out on the water, it’s unsafe for other people.”
Key Colony Beach officials told local residents in a letter that migrant boats were their problem, not the government’s. “[I]f any vessel ends up on your private property [it] becomes your problem. This rule of law is both inconvenient and a bit expensive, but it is the law.”