Secure the Borders!!

Now I know there are a lot of voices back in the US calling for the government to do more to secure our borders and stop the overwhelming influx of illegal immigrants entering our country. Well, I think those concerned citizens shouldn't be losing any more sleep as I can attest first-hand that our border with the Dominican Republic is being well patrolled! Allow me to set the scene:

It was Thursday morning, the night immediately after the amazing Lunar Eclipse of Wednesday, Feb 20th. Actually, I didn't even know that an eclipse was going to occur, but luckily my landlord Eloy came and knocked on my door and ushered me outside. It was absolutely spectacular, way better than any solar eclipse since you could actually look very clearly at the whole event as it happened. I had seen other lunar eclipses before but this one was particularly striking in how bright the moon originally was, and then how truly blood-red it turned. If I was living in the Middle Ages, I would have definitely gone ape$%^& too at the sight of something like that!

Anyways, back to the morning after, I woke up on Thursday and went out to the front yard and saw a helicopter just hovering over one spot in the bay. It was a red US Coast Guard chopper and it was sitting right on top of some type of boat. There were a couple of Puerto Ricans who had pulled their cars over to survey the scene as well... I started chatting with one of them and he told me that he suspected it was a boat from the Dominican Republic either carrying refugees or smuggling drugs. Apparently it is a rather frequent occurrence around here and these guys didn't seem to sympathetic to the boaters' plight. "I'm not racist or anything, but they're bad people!!!" one local explained to me. After about a half hour, the boat turned back to head west again and started travelling towards the horizon as the chopper now flew back to its base in Aguadilla, surely in need of some refuelling too. But just as the boat was about to drop out of sight, it doubles back and starts heading towards Puerto Rico again. And sure enough, the helicopter returns and intercepts it. This time, the chopper is accompanied by a second helicopter as well and after hovering above the boat for another 45 minutes or so, the boat finally follows them towards Aguadilla. The locals here tell me that they will most likely be arrested and thrown in jail now, before ultimately being deported again.

For the pictures, I suggest downloading them and using magnify/zoom to see the most details.. again, I apologize that my camera doesn't have a better zoom lens. All pics were taken from my front yard.


Here you can see the chopper hovering extremely low above the boat with Desecheo Island in the background.


Now there's two helicopters keeping an eye on our Dominican friends.