Marbilia Gabriel Mejia was killed when this panga boat, pictured above, overturned near the Torrey Pines State Beach. She was fatally injured when the boat she was traveling in capsized 50 yards from land.
COURTESY: ICE MARINE TASK FORCE
Ariel Del Valle commenced negotiations with God when the seawater in the boat rose to just below his knees.
Near him, a man heaved his last meal. Others fought over whether to call for help. A few said nothing, silently coming to terms with their apparent doom.
Published: Sept. 14, 2012 Updated: Sept. 16, 2012 3:22 p.m.
BY CINDY CARCAMO / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Del Valle, 30, of Aguas Calientes, Mexico, thought of his family in Huntington Beach. He implored God in a whisper: "You let me see the sunset earlier today. Please give me the chance to see the sunrise."
This journey – sold to Del Valle as a quick boat ride into the United States, an alternative to a weeks-long march through the desert – had morphed into a nightmare. The "panga" carrying Ariel and other Mexican men was far out in the Pacific, its engine dead, its hull taking on water.
He'd become part of a new smuggling phenomenon.
In recent years, the United States has tightened land routes long used by people trying to get into California and Arizona illegally from Mexico. Patrols increased. Fencing expanded. As a result, fewer have made successful trips by land from Mexico into the U.S.
But as land routes have tightened, the unexpected result has been a spike of illegal immigration by sea.
These sea journeys, starting in Baja and ending somewhere on the Southern California coast, generally cost more than land crossings. People pay up to $9,000 to make the trips. The voyages are fraught with danger, with people crammed into tiny boats designed for day fishing trips. Life jackets are rare. Communication is scarce. Night landings are typical.
While land travel still accounts for the majority of illegal immigration from Mexico, apprehensions along the Pacific Ocean have tripled since 2008 along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to federal estimates.
Apprehensions along the California coastline are on pace to break records.
In the first 10 months of this fiscal year – starting in October – U.S. immigration agents picked up 558 people in connection with 156 smuggling incidents along the coastline from San Diego to San Luis Obispo counties, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data. The numbers include drug and human smuggling.
It's unclear how many boats go undetected. Some make it to California beaches. Others may disappear in the ocean. What's known is that enough boats reach their target to make it lucrative for smugglers, said Mike Carney, acting special agent in charge of the ICE Homeland Security Investigations in San Diego.
Carney said immigration agents noticed an upturn in sea smuggling soon after President George W. Bush signed the 2006 Secure Fence Act. In the first years after that, immigration enforcement agents saw boats and other watercraft on the shores of San Diego. Some were found empty. In a handful of cases, officials caught people trying to swim from Mexico to San Diego.
As crews raised more fences – some 600 miles added from California to Texas by the end of fiscal 2009 – the ocean became a more popular smuggling route. Smugglers took greater risks and formed new alliances with drug cartels.
In San Diego, ICE officials threw resources and agents at the problem, Carney said.
In response, smugglers pushed farther north. In 2010, at San Onofre State Beach, Dana Point and San Clemente, agents apprehended 63 people on seven incursions. Last year, the number of people detained in sea smuggling events in Orange County nearly doubled, to 119.
Smugglers continue to readjust their routes – taking boats out behind the Mexican Coronado Islands and into international waters before making a beeline north of San Diego – as far as San Luis Obispo County.
The shift in tactics has led to the creation of a regional anti-smuggling maritime task force that would reach all of Southern California.
Carney compared human smuggling with a balloon: When federal officials clamp down in one area, the problem expands in another.
"It's a game of cat and mouse," he said
Some who board pangas or other vessels make it to California and find work. Some are apprehended. Others disappear or die. These are their stories.
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