5/13/2008: Security News Brief: Restricted by Land, now Illegals and
Smugglers come by Boat:
There are fears, among residents of Del Mar California, what one may
find paddling out to sea. A body? An abandoned boat or its wreckage?
Or smugglers, possibly armed?
Already, five boats belonging to smugglers of drugs or illegal
immigrants have been found beached or wrecked by reefs in the past six
months - a sign that smuggling by sea is the latest route to subvert
the new border fence and toughened frontier.
While waterborne journeys have been common on the Atlantic with Cuban
or Haitian migrants, the Pacific passage is unusual because it's
occurring year-round now, not just confined to the warm months when
smugglers' bigger boats hide in plain sight amid U.S. maritime
traffic, federal officials say.
Equally troublesome is how smugglers are now using disposable,
sometimes barely seaworthy boats, such as a 26-foot watercraft called
a panga that held 17 people and was intercepted recently.
With engines that fail and often without life vests, the boats usually
motor at night, without navigational lights or registration markings,
skippered by novices who sometimes strike coastal reefs - and then are
forced to abandon ****p and their marijuana load, as happened with an
18-foot boat last month off San Diego.
The voyages sometimes end as far as 30 miles north of the border, on
the shores of upscale Del Mar, known for its horse racing track.
Distant from the base of federal sea and air patrols in San Diego, the
illicit crews can land and escape, close to the interstate highway
leading to Los Angeles, a hub for illegal immigrants heading to
Chicago and elsewhere in the country, federal officials say.
''It's midnight, it's in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, it's dark
and it's cold. Not only is it an arduous undertaking, it's ripe for
disaster,'' said Miguel Unzueta, special agent in charge for the
federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in San Diego and
Imperial Counties. So far, no deaths have been re****ted.
''It's hard to see a small boat in the ocean from an airplane. If you
don't know if somebody is in need of rescue, you may not be searching
for them,'' Unzueta said.
They're using small crafts under 20 feet and cra****ng them ashore.
So far this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, federal authorities have
seized 15 smuggling boats along the Southern California coast,
compared with 10 in all of the last fiscal year, according to ICE
officials.
Such smuggling raises concerns about national security against
terrorism, especially as boating's high season is about to kick in, so
the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last week unveiled a new
Small Vessel Security Strategy that seeks to educate private boat
owners on how to spot suspicious activity at sea, such as a rickety
boat without a registration mark on the hull.
Patrolling the vast Pacific is daunting: the coast largely operates on
a ''seemingly honor-based neighborhood watch program'' where 85
percent of ****ts and marinas are in private hands, Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a statement about the new strategy.
While the Coast Guard and other federal agencies use planes,
helicopters and a fleet of vessels to monitor the waterfront, ''it's
really too much for one country to patrol and to secure,'' said Coast
Guard Lt. Dave Oney. Cooperation with other Pacific nations and even
community-based vigilance groups in Seattle help with security, he
said.
Smuggling by sea is part of a larger picture on how smugglers are
trying to thwart the government's new 670-mile fence being constructed
on the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.
Illegal migrants and their smugglers are now using blowtorches to cut
holes in fences, digging tunnels, and even using tall ladders and
bungee ropes to scale and descend the new fencing, federal officials
said.
They acknowledge the battle is a cat-and-mouse game that changes
course whenever the government toughens one part of the border.
''It's a balloon, and when you squeeze that balloon with enforcement
actions, that activity goes off to the other direction and you have to
enforce in that direction and head that off,'' said Vincent Bond, a
spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in San Diego.
''The smuggler is always looking for the weak link.''
Federal officials and immigrant rights advocates are divided on
whether the measures on land are working.
Between last October and March, the Border Patrol made 347,372
apprehensions, compared with 418,173 for the same period a year ago.
Ramon Rivera, assistant chief of the 16,000-agent patrol, said that's
a signal that the new fence and more technology and manpower on the
border are working.
''The smugglers are frustrated. They've been able to come and go with
impunity and they're getting upset,'' Rivera said. ''But we're
winning. You can tell by our numbers.''
But Fernando Garcia, executive director of Border Network for Human
Rights in El Paso, Texas, which advocates comprehensive immigration
reform, said the new fence is ''a failure.''
''It doesn't mean that people aren't crossing,'' Garcia said. ''It's
strictly a political decision in Wa****ngton to show we're tough on
immigrants.''
Source: Morning Security News Brief via Internal Company News Wire
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