Smuggling boat crash off San Diego latest deadly crossing
Just after midnight on a Friday in late October 2021, the captain of a fishing boat sailing nearly 100 miles off the San Diego coast saw a faint light in the distance. In what a Coast Guard pilot later described as a miracle, the captain had spotted the occupants of a disabled, overloaded fishing boat signaling for help.
The 25 migrants on board were stranded at sea for three days in a boat designed for just a few people. All in all, they were lucky – they had survived.
As smuggling attempts along the Southern California coast have increased in recent years, so have mishaps and fatalities. Authorities and experts say a number of forces have influenced both the rise in such incidents and the attention they receive.
Saturday night provided the latest and deadliest example of the dangers of such crossings, when at least eight people died after two suspected smuggling ships capsized near Black’s Beach in San Diego.
“All of this points to how dangerous border crossings have become, particularly sea crossings,” said Pedro Rios, a human rights activist and director of the American Friends Service Committee’s US Mexico/Border Program.
The 911 caller who alerted authorities to the incident said there were between 16 and 23 people on board the two vessels. Authorities found no survivors, although it was not clear as of Sunday if there were other casualties or if the survivors fled before rescue workers arrived on the beach.
Anyhow, officials called it one of the deadliest maritime incidents in San Diego history, if not the deadliest, and said it highlighted the dangers of such border crossing attempts.
“Every time they get in a panga to go north, their life is in danger,” Capt. James Spitler, commander of the Coast Guard’s San Diego sector, told reporters Sunday morning. At least 23 people have died making sea crossings since 2017, he said, but added that “the true number of deaths in the California coastal region is unknown. These boats are often overloaded [and] The maintenance is bad.”
At least three migrants died off the coast of San Diego County last year. A man and a woman drowned in November, when her panga overturned off Imperial Beach, one man died and three others were injured, in April, when her panga overturned near Ocean Beach.
At least four people died in 2021, all in May. Earlier this month, a boat carrying at least 32 migrants crashed on a reef in Point Loma and broke up. Three people died and the others sustained injuries. Later that month, one person died and at least eight others were hospitalized when a panga capsized off La Jolla.
A year earlier, at least four people died trying to cross the ocean. Two died in February when their ship capsized off the coast of Imperial Beach, and two others died off Ocean Beach in August.
Federal authorities have rescued or intercepted and arrested hundreds of others during this period.
Smugglers turning to the Pacific Ocean aren’t new — two people died off Torrey Pines State Beach in January 2010 — but attempts have increased significantly.
The coastal region of Southern California has seen a 771% increase in incidents of people smuggling at sea since 2017, Spitler said Sunday.
So far this fiscal year, which began last October, Border Patrol has recorded about 300 sea crossings involving swimmers, surfboards, pangas and other types of vessels, according to Eric Lavergne, special operations supervisor for the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector.
Arrests at sea in smuggling attempts rose more than 90% in 2020 from a year earlier, rising from 662 to 1,273, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Spitler, the Coast Guard commander, claimed that not all who crossed the border by sea are migrants seeking a better life.
“This is part of the effort of a transnational criminal organization,” he told reporters at a news conference outside the lifeguard headquarters in San Diego on Sunday. “These people are often victims of labor and sex trafficking when they arrive.”
Federal officials have also warned in recent years that not all ships departing from Mexico land near the border, with some now bypassing San Diego County entirely.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, sea smuggling has increased significantly in Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties. In 2021, officials responded to a record 12 incidents in the Long Beach, Malibu, Newport Beach, Palos Verdes, and San Pedro areas. This year also saw the first-ever panga landing on Santa Catalina Island.
Saturday’s deaths were the latest in a string of large-scale smuggling tragedies in Southern California. In March 2021, two months before the boat accident that killed three victims, 13 migrants died and 12 others were injured when their SUV collided with a large oil rig in Imperial County.
Rios, the human rights activist, said dangerous crossings are the result of US policy.
“A lot of these people might want to present themselves at the ports of entry, maybe for asylum applications,” he said. U.S. enforcement efforts and policies have “pushed people into having to take much more dangerous and extreme action.”
Title 42, the pandemic-era policy expelling asylum seekers and other migrants caught crossing the border without documents, is among those measures, Rios said.
Border police officials have also said criminal groups have attempted to circumvent tighter border security by going to sea.