The lawyer of the only survivor of the sinking of a migrant boat off the coast of Florida said this Thursday in an interview with Noticias Telemundo that the young man "saw how the other people were dying around him until he was left alone" in the boat in who was traveling with 40 other migrants from the Bahamas to the United States.
The 25-foot boat they were in capsized in the ocean during a storm Saturday night, shortly after setting sail from Bimini Island in the Bahamas, with 40 people on board.
[“He lived through hell”: the mother of the only survivor of the shipwreck off Florida asks to be released]
The Coast Guard has so far recovered one body and has little hope of finding the other 38 migrants missing on the high seas.
The young survivor, who was traveling to the United States to reunite with his mother, will now fight for humanitarian asylum, according to his lawyer, Naimeh Salem.
"The first thing we need is for the government to give us a humanitarian permit so that he can go out and meet his mother as soon as possible," she said.
"Mom, my sister died": speaks the mother of the only survivor of the shipwreck on the Florida coast
Jan. 26, 202202:45
The lawyer assured that those who transferred the young man and his 18-year-old sister were human traffickers.
"They thought they were going to be safe,
but we see once again how difficult it is for immigrants to get to this country in a safe way," he explained.
“He says that he did everything he could to encourage his sister, that he called her over and over again until she disappeared, just like so many other people disappeared before his eyes.
That's why he's so traumatized, he doesn't understand how he was the only survivor."
The mother asked the immigration authorities to allow her to stay in the country after "living through hell."
“He told me, 'Mom, my sister died, my sister drowned.
I don't know mom, I looked for her as much as I could and I couldn't find her.
I called her and called her and my sister couldn't take it," said her mother, Marcia, who her son told her.
The young man – whose identity and nationality have not been revealed at the request of his family – was found sitting on the hull of the boat capsized by a commercial vessel on Tuesday.
[Caribbean Coyotes: The disappearance of five migrants reveals the boom and the nightmare of reaching the United States by sea]
"He clung to what was left of the boat, just as you can see in the photo: he clung, he clung to that and to prayer," Marcia said.
“He told me, 'I've been through hell, mom.
There were women, children, many drowned on Saturday night," he added this Wednesday in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.
The Coast Guard has deployed several rescue teams searching for possible survivors by air and sea on a 135-mile stretch from Bimini to Florida.
The young survivor was found 45 miles from Fort Pierce in South Florida.
Two brothers who were shipwrecked off the coast of Florida.
The 22-year-old man was the only survivor of the boat;
the 18-year-old woman is still missing. Courtesy
However, Captain Jo-Ann F. Burdian warned this Wednesday at a press conference that the situation has become “desperate” and that with each passing moment, it becomes “more unlikely to find survivors.
Immigration authorities have warned for years of the extreme dangers of trying to immigrate to the country illegally by sea, particularly through the treacherous waters of the Caribbean.