Coast Guard fights on different front line in the immigration crisis

Decent article (and video) from CNN about the Coast Guard's "alien migrant interdiction operations" mission. It's been awhile since I was involved in AMIO, but the sentiments and challenges have held true.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/30/world/uscg-embed-migrants-at-sea/index.html?iref=allsearch

For any prospective Coast Guard Academy cadets (or future Coast Guard officers), if you're on a cutter, especially on the east coast, AMIO is a mission you'll likely become familiar with.

I, for one, had never even given this mission any consideration. I suppose "out of sight, out of mind" as I can assure you we don't hear about this in Chicago.

If I read the details correctly, the number of migrants picked up increased approx. 40% in the last year (10,126 in total)? Wow! Not sure how many more missions (or just more bodies per mission) but would think that it has got to put quite a strain on the Coast Guard.

USMCGrunt said:

I, for one, had never even given this mission any consideration. I suppose "out of sight, out of mind" as I can assure you we don't hear about this in Chicago.

If I read the details correctly, the number of migrants picked up increased approx. 40% in the last year (10,126 in total)? Wow! Not sure how many more missions (or just more bodies per mission) but would think that it has got to put quite a strain on the Coast Guard.

Click to expand...

The Coast Guard's budget is far smaller now than when I was in.

AMIO is a major missions. In the two years I was on my cutter, we processed over 1,000 Cuban migrants. Keep in mind, in two years, 50+% of that time is underway. For my cutter, stationed in District 5 (in New Jersey), we split our time between north patrols (mostly fisheries, search and rescue, and homeland security missions) and south patrols (almost exclusively AMIO). So in about 6 months, we had 1,000 migrants alone, on a signed 210' cutter. Some of the migrants came from other cutters, and some we caught.