President-elect Donald Trump prepares to make his triumphant return to the White House, and all eyes are on the porous southern border. Trump comes back to Washington with a ringing mandate from the American people to crack down on massive unchecked illegal immigration. Yet the land border with Mexico is not the only weak spot marring national integrity. The sea lanes of California continue to be breached by increasingly brazen traffickers.
On November 15, one mile off the coast of Newport Beach, California, the US Coast Guard stopped a boat containing 21 illegal aliens. Among them were 18 Mexicans, two Uzbekistan natives, and a Russian national.
Uzbeks Sail Into Sunny California
The run-in was not unusual. “We come across boats on a regular basis,” Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Levi Read told Fox-11 TV in Los Angeles. “Not all the time do they have that many people on it, though.”
Accounts of the engagement drew widespread attention after Newport Beach Mayor Will O’Neill expressed his frustration with California’s Democratic lawmakers, whom he says have put the entire state at risk. “When you have people from Uzbekistan, of all places, coming in through the southern border, something is broken," O’Neill stated. “Every city in California now is essentially a border city thanks to SB 54. We’re told our local authorities are prohibited from working with federal authorities from stopping people like this.”
SB 54, also known as the California Values Act, went into effect in 2018. It officially affirmed the Golden State’s status as a sanctuary haven for illegal aliens. The human traffickers took notice. They also understand that California is a coastal state and that there is more than one way to smuggle an alien over the border.
Off on Your Merry Way
Boldness is the defining feature of the sea traffickers. In April, a motorboat was captured on video recklessly speeding onto the shoreline at Carlsbad, near San Diego. The boat came alarmingly close to plowing over a surfer in the water as it hit the beach. Twenty or so illegal aliens then scampered off the vessel and made their way past oceanfront homes, where they were “whisked away by SUVs that appear[ed] to be waiting for them,” reported CBS-8 TV in San Diego.
“First I'm thinking how dangerous it was,” Carlsbad Mayor Keith Blackburn said. “No regard for public safety, for surfers, for people who were in the water at the time or even on the beach.”
“We don't know who these people are, we don't know where they went or where they're going,” said San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond.
But why make a mad dash for it in a “welcoming” state like California when you can simply dock your boat like an American citizen enjoying a day on the sea? Also in April, an “overcrowded” craft containing 20 illegal aliens “pulled up to a small dock in Newport Bay,” KTLA-TV in Los Angeles reported. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office said the landing occurred around noon. The illegals soon poured out, and vehicles were once again standing by to transport them to their next destination.
“I saw a van pull up and people jump in, and away it went,” a witness told the station. This is everyday life in Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s California.
“From 2020 to 2023, according to [US] Customs and Border Protection, maritime smuggling in California [has] increased by 139% to nearly 740 reported incidents last year,” CBS-8 documented. Newsom was sworn into office in January 2019.
Overloaded panga boats used by smugglers continue to put illegal aliens at grave risk of drowning. Several deadly incidents have received big-box media attention, but still the panga boats come.
In late October, San Diego Border Patrol officials arrested 40 individuals within 24 hours in a coordinated anti-maritime smuggling operation. On October 28, “agents assigned to the CBP’s San Clemente Border Patrol station spotted a suspicious panga three miles off the coast of Solana Beach, California,” a CBP press release detailed. Fifteen illegal aliens were nabbed on US soil, but the “captain of the panga was able to abscond and maneuvered the vessel back south into Mexican waters without being intercepted.”
The California sea border is an exploding battle zone in the uphill war against illegal immigration. Some Democrats have made that hill far steeper with their sanctuary state contortions. As with all wars, people are being killed, and cities and towns are being ravaged.
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