Coast Guardsmen in Southern California are seeing an influx of migrant crossings by boat — and with them, more foreign nationals from U.S. 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.
The Coast Guard locates a vessel carrying 16 people that had been stranded at sea for two days.(Coast Guard San Diego)
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.
Incentives for smugglers, migrants
Republican California State Rep. Carl DeMaio told Fox News Digital that migrants are incentivized by taxpayer-funded benefits — such as housing, travel and food — when they arrive in the Golden State. On the flip side, smugglers are incentivized by the hefty payments migrants will make to be escorted across the border, or in this case, to U.S. shores.
Hagen said the influx of migrant boats along the San Diego coast has not significantly overwhelmed Guardsmen and, in fact, has shone a spotlight on the issue and brought more resources to his team. He said the Coast Guard wants to strengthen its presence at the southern coastline “to protect the border security and territorial integrity of the United States.”
President Donald Trump’s recent immigration-related executive orders include the declaration of a national emergency at the border, halted refugee resettlement, ordered a removal process without asylum, ordered border wall reconstruction and deployed the military to the border.
In the first nine days of Trump’s second term, ICE arrested more than 7,400 illegal immigrants and placed nearly 6,000 ICE detainers on individuals believed to be in the country illegally.
