California Coast Guard Captain Sounds Alarm as Migrants Inundate Pacific Waters; Wealthy California Beach Town Skirts State’s Sanctuary Law in Planned Migrant Boat Crackdown

California Coast Guard captain sounds alarm as migrants inundate Pacific waters:

Coast Guardsmen in Southern California are seeing an influx of migrant crossings by boat — and with them, more foreign nationals from US adversary countries.

Over the last 90 days, the Coast Guard has recorded about 200 migrant boat encounters near the San Diego coast, amounting to approximately two migrant boat interventions per day, officials told Fox News Digital.

More daily migrant boat interdictions

“We see a myriad of elderly, male, female, children,” Coast Guard District 11 Capt. Jason Hagen told Fox News Digital. “We’re starting to see an uptick in other nationalities, as well, which is a…national security concern because it’s not just your economic Mexicans looking to come to the United States for work. It’s also … bad actors coming from other countries. We’ve seen nationalities to include Chinese, Russian, Uzbekistan[i], Pakistan[i]. It’s really all over the place.”

Hagen added that 10 or 15 years ago, most boats carried migrants from Mexico.

The Coast Guard captain attributes the recent uptick in boat encounters and “landing” encounters, when Coast Guardsmen find beached boats with abandoned life jackets, to increased land border security under the Trump administration.

“What you’ve seen in the news certainly has an effect on the maritime environment,” Hagen explained. “It’s kind of like squeezing a balloon — you squeeze the balloon, and the air pushes to the other side, right? Well, that’s the same thing that’s happening with the migrant flow. They’re locking down the land border pretty good … where they used to get thousands a day. Now, they’re now down in the hundreds a day. So, the migrants have to go somewhere. The smugglers have to move their operations somewhere. And we’re starting to see an uptick in the maritime environment.”

Hagen also noted the dangers of smuggling activity at sea.

“Just last night … we had a case where we interdicted a vessel 20 miles offshore with 16 people on board who … their boat was disabled at sea, and they [were] at sea for two days with no food or water. … Had we not found them, they could have just continued drifting west and further into the Pacific Ocean.”

In February, the Coast Guard San Diego announced that the Cutter Waesche crew offloaded more than 37,000 pounds of cocaine worth more than $275 million in San Diego.

The offload was the result of 11 separate suspected drug smuggling vessel interdictions between December and February. —>READ MORE HERE

Wealthy California beach town skirts state’s sanctuary law in planned migrant boat crackdown:

As other California cities double down on sanctuary policies to protect illegal immigrants, one coastal enclave is looking to work directly with border authorities to monitor its beaches 24 hours a day in an effort to thwart boats carrying illegal migrants.

San Clemente city leaders told City Manager Andy Hall earlier this month to coordinate with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to discuss installing and using existing cameras to watch over the city’s 7 miles of coastline.

Mayor Steve Knoblock told Fox News Digital the cameras are intended to deter illegal immigration and other criminal activity. He noted that small fishing boats called pangas often come ashore to drop off illegal migrants who disappear inland.

“In the last month or so, we’ve had a large increase in the number of pangas that have come up on our beach,” he said. “It happens, and nobody seems to notice. No one seems to capture it. There’s no interdiction, and we’ve been having them with much greater frequency.”

The city has cameras on its pier to monitor the beach for marine safety issues but none that monitor the ocean, said Knoblock. He suggested turning the cameras toward the water and adding technological upgrades. At a Feb. 4 meeting, the City Council agreed to contact the U.S. Border Patrol to inquire about working together to surveil the waters off the city, the mayor said.

In 2021, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) warned of increased sightings of pangas being used for smuggling in Southern California. The fishing boats are used by smugglers to transport migrants and illegal drugs, according to ICE.

At the time, ICE said around 90 migrants were caught along the coastline of Los Angeles County on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and in San Pedro, Long Beach, Malibu, Santa Catalina Island and Newport Beach in Orange County. —>READ MORE HERE

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