Four bodies were discovered floating in debris off the coast of southern Florida on Sunday.
Two male bodies were discovered by passengers on a boat some 20 miles off the coast of Hollywood beach, Reuters reported. Coast Guard officials called to the scene conducted a search in the area and found a dead woman and a fourth male victim.
Officials do not yet know the victims' identities or how they ended up in the water. No boat wreckage was found near the bodies, which were recovered near a "trashline," a layer of garbage floating on the ocean's surface.
"All we know are the bodies were in bad condition," Mark Barney, spokesman for the Coast Guard, told the Miami Herald. "So the bodies were in the water a decent amount of time."
All day Sunday officials conducted an aerial search for boat debris, other bodies and victims that might have been stranded in the water.
The bodies were found a day before Bahamas military officials found a small boat carrying 100 Haitians off Ragged Island, located some 400 miles from Broward County, the newspaper reported. The passengers were taken into custody. As of Monday there was no indication that any of the passengers were missing.
Also on Monday, 19 more Haitian migrants were found washed ashore behind a residential building in Hillsboro Beach, North Broward, the Miami Herald reported. It is also not clear if the migrants have any connection to the bodies.
The bodies were taken to the Broward medical examiner's office for identification and the Broward Sheriff's Office is conducting an investigation.
"There was no identification on the bodies that lead us to the direction where they are from," Barney told the newspaper. "We are trying to find out how they got there."
If the victims are Haitian immigrants, it would not be the first time Haitians and immigrants from other Caribbean countries have been found dead while attempting to enter the U.S. through Florida.
A Haitian migrant died off Fort Lauderdale Beach in January. Another Haitian woman died after a boating accident off Miami Beach in late 2013, the newspaper reported.
