Stowaway found in landing gear of plane after flight from Guatemala to Miami

Officials discovered a 26-year-old man inside an aircraft’s landing gear compartment after a flight from Guatemala landed in Miami on Saturday morning.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a statement that the man was being evaluated at a hospital after he was discovered on the flight. 

The agency said that he had “attempted to evade detection in the landing gear compartment of an aircraft arriving from Guatemala” before ultimately being detained by its officers.

American Airlines in a statement referred to the incident only as “a security issue” but said that “American Airlines flight 1182 with service from Guatemala(GUA) to Miami (MIA), arriving at 10:06 a.m. local time was met by law enforcement” and added that they were working with law enforcement officials. 

The news comes as data from CBP has separately noted that arrests at the southern border have been on the decline since peaking in July. CBP data showed that 192,000 people were arrested along the southern border in September. Comparatively, in July that number reached a high of over 213,000.

Immigration policy has been a point of contention between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans, especially former President Trump, have claimed that the Biden administration has not done enough to address migrants entering the southern border. 

At the same time, Democrats have blasted the previous administration’s controversial immigration policies, including a short-lived “zero-tolerance” policy in 2018 of separating families at the border who were seeking asylum. 

Speaking in Guatemala in June during her first foreign trip as vice president, Kamala Harris urged would-be migrants to the U.S. from Central American countries to stay home.

“Do not come,” she said, repeatedly. “Do not come.”