"Morning, we were made aware by Cuban authorities of an incident off the coast of Cuba. We, immediately began to look into it. As it stands now, the Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard, others are involved.

The majority of the information we still possess is what Cuban authorities are providing both the public and the US government.

We have our embassy on the ground in Havana working this as we speak, asking for access to to the people that were on those vessels if they were American citizens or permanent residents.

According to the Cuban, regime, the boat was registered in Florida. We're tracking that down."

"Well, the authority the the authorities in Cuba, the border guard has constant contact with the coast guard, so they alerted them this morning. I was made aware of it at that time. So oftentimes in these incidents and things like this, the initial reports are incomplete.

And then as the day has progressed, I think early this morning, certainly by 9AM or 10AM this time, maybe a little later our time here, I reached out and, we began to look at it independently.

We have various different elements of the US government that are trying to verify elements of the story."

"I don't know who has possession of the vessel, which is the first thing we'd wanna have. We obviously wanna have access to these people if they are American citizens or US residents.

But I'm not gonna speculate now because right now, still, a lot of the information that's out there is information that's been provided by the Cubans. We are going to verify that information independently and reach our own conclusion."