Walter Astrada

Dominicans wait to disembark a U.S. Coast Guard ship at Don Diego Colon seaport in Santo Domingo. The thirteen immigrants were rescued after an overloaded boat with about thirty-two people capsized between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. The two islands are separated by the Mona Passage, about 80 miles wide. Between 1982 and 2004, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted 24,413 undocumented Dominicans at sea. From 1980 to 2000, more than half a million Dominicans entered the U.S.