The Raft by James Consor, US Coast Guard Photo

At sunset, a raft of truck tire inner tubes lashed together is spotted, floating passenger-less in the Gulf of Mexico. Migrants have been known to attempt to ride the Gulf Stream current to reach American shores on such precarious craft. Coast Guard migrant interdiction operations are as much humanitarian efforts as they are law-enforcement missions. In fact, the majority of migrant interdiction cases handled by the Coast Guard actually begin as search-and-rescue missions, usually on the high seas rather than in U.S. coastal waters.