The Coast Guard intercepted dozens of migrants on the high seas as they tried to reach U.S. soil and sent them to the Dominican Republic or handed them over to the U.S. Border Patrol, officials said.

The migrants were isolated in three separate operations over the past week off Puerto Rico and repatriated in recent days, the agency said. said in a news release Tuesday.

“The daily work performed by our Coast Guard and partner agency watchdogs and response units is critical to stopping illegal migratory travel at sea and removing migrants from a very dangerous environment,” said Coast Guard Cmdr. , Matthew Roman, in a statement.

“We urge anyone thinking about participating in one of these trips not to trust their lives to human traffickers,” Roman said. “Do not go to sea, these trips are extremely dangerous and most of the time they are carried out aboard very overloaded and unseaworthy vessels, which fill with water and have no rescue equipment. Instead, seek safe, orderly and legal migration pathways.”

In the most recent interception, a Coast Guard aircrew from Miami spotted a migrant boat off the coast of Mona Island in Puerto Rico on Saturday and dispatched the cutter Paul Clark.

The cutter’s crew carried 27 migrants: 22 men and five women from Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

On Friday morning, a 25-foot migrant boat was sighted south of Mona Island and intercepted by the same cutter, carrying 17 men and six women claiming to be citizens of the Dominican Republic.

Four of them were detained and transferred to the U.S. Border Patrol for processing, but details of that case were not immediately available.

In the first operation, on October 23, Coast Guard Cutter Joseph Napier stopped a 26-foot “makeshift boat” north of Aguadillo, Puerto Rico, and captured seven native Dominicans.

One of the migrants was handed over to the US Border Patrol the next day, according to the statement.