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Now, smugglers are turning to the Pacific Ocean to ferry illegal aliens into the country.
Coast Guard Captain Jason Hagen revealed to Fox News that there has been an alarming surge in boats packed with illegal aliens heading toward San Diego. Over the past 90 days, authorities have intercepted approximately 200 such vessels in the waters off Southern California.
And it’s not just Mexican economic migrants making the journey.
“We see a myriad of elderly, male, female, children,” Hagen said. “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 include Chinese, Russian, Uzbekistan[i], Pakistan[i]. It’s really all over the place.”
In the past, most of these boats would have been exclusively carrying Mexican migrants. That’s no longer the case.
The Coast Guard has also discovered abandoned vessels left behind by human smugglers along Southern California’s beaches, highlighting how rapidly the crisis is evolving.
Hagen pointed to the border security efforts under Trump as the reason for this surge in maritime migration.
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“What you’ve seen in the news certainly has an effect on the maritime environment,” he 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.”
With traditional land routes drying up, human traffickers are now taking to the sea, exploiting desperate migrants willing to pay top dollar for a dangerous journey.
And it’s putting lives at risk.
“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,” Hagen recounted. “Had we not found them, they could have just continued drifting west and further into the Pacific Ocean.”
This new battle comes as the Coast Guard has been engaged in a long-running fight against drug traffickers in the region. Now, they’re also dealing with an influx of illegal migrants attempting to bypass the border by sea.
The lure of California’s taxpayer-funded benefits is fueling this crisis, according to State Representative Carl DeMaio (R-CA).
“It is a dangerous journey, and it also is very predatory, because many of these individuals cannot afford the $6,000 to come across land,” DeMaio explained. “We are being told by Border Patrol that the cost of coming through the waterways on a boat can be $12[,000] to $15,000.”
Illegal immigrants are paying double or even triple the cost to cross by sea, falling prey to ruthless smugglers who often abandon them at sea with no food, water, or means of survival.
With illegal migration patterns shifting, the fight against unlawful entry into the U.S. is moving offshore.
The question remains: Will California’s leaders continue to ignore the crisis or finally take action before it spirals further out of control?
