Arrest made in 2022 migrant smuggling boat capsizing that killed 39 people

David Goodhue, Miami Herald on Oct 5, 2026

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On Jan. 25, 2022, a Jacksonville-based tugboat crew returning from a job in Puerto Rico found an overturned 25-foot boat with a man sitting on the hull floating about 45 miles off Fort Pierce Inlet.

The crew rescued 22-year-old Juan Esteban Montoya, who later told federal agents he and his 18-year-old sister were among 40 people on the boat when its engines stopped just two hours into the trip and it began taking on water in increasingly rough seas before capsizing.

Twelve people initially surfaced, he said, but not his sister, Maria Camila Montoya Caicedo.

One by one, though, over the course of several days, the survivors sank below the surface and disappeared. Some hallucinated before fading away from exhaustion, Montoya told agents. The U.S. Coast Guard found Maria’s body floating off Brevard County on Jan. 27, 2022.

All the passengers were migrants who paid smugglers to take them from the Bahamas to South Florida, Homeland Security Investigations agents said. Agents Friday arrested the man they say introduced the Montoyas to the smugglers, 57-year-old Earl Knowles, a Bahamian national already serving two years in federal prison for illegally entering the U.S. after being previously deported.

The Montoyas lived in Colombia at the time, and their mother paid smugglers to take her children to Panama, then to the Bahamas, where’d they’d board a boat to take them to South Florida. The mother hoped they would join her where she lived in Houston, Texas, according to the criminal complaint filed against Knowles. Agents said the mother wanted her children to escape the violence in their country.

When they arrived in Nassau, the siblings stayed in a house with Knowles and the rest of the passengers for about 10 days before flying to Bimini, where the smuggling crew was waiting. The complaint does not state the nationalities of the other people on the boat.

In February 2022, agents interviewed Esteban, who told them that the man who picked him and Maria up from the airport was named Eart, who the complaint states is Knowles. In September of that year, Esteban picked Knowles’ photograph from a lineup of six men and identified him as Eart. Esteban said Knowles also provided him and his sister with housing until they departed Bimini, according to the complaint.

On July 22, 2025, another migrant boat ran aground on the beach at Fort Pierce. Ten people were on board, including Knowles. The same agent working the capsizing recognized Knowles and interviewed him, according to the complaint. Knowles admitted to being a Bahamian national without authorization to enter the U.S. According to court records, he was deported in 1995, 2006 and 2019. He was also convicted of bank robbery in New York in 2016, according to court records.

He told agents that day that he paid smugglers $7,000 to take him to South Florida.

Knowles pleaded guilty to illegally reentering the U.S. after previously being deported in February. He is serving his sentence in Sandstone, Minnesota, according to federal Bureau of Prisons records.

He told agents he became friends with a Colombian man he met while serving a previous prison sentence who called him in 2022 and asked if he could help smuggle his niece and nephew — Esteban and Maria — to Florida from the Bahamas.

Knowles facilitated a telephone call between the Colombian and a man the complaint calls “Co-Conspirator 1,” who put together the smuggling venture. Knowles told agents he had found migrant clients for the man on several occasions, and would be paid $1,000 for the referrals, according to the complaint.

He denied, however, that he was paid for introducing Esteban and Maria to the smuggler, according to the complaint, claiming he was only helping his Colombian friend. Esteban and Maria paid the smuggler, who did not go on the trip, between $10,000 and $12,000, the complaint states.

Knowles heard about the boat sinking through news reports, he told agents, and said the man who arranged the journey “appeared to vanish.” But, the man then began calling Knowles some time later, asking him if he had potential migrant clients, according to the complaint.

“Knowles described being shocked, noting Co-Conspirator 1 just killed dozens of people and was still continuing his smuggling operation,” the agent wrote in his report.

Knowles identified Co-Conspirator 1 in a photo lineup, but it is unclear if the man has been arrested.