Thread: Immigrants on boat taken into custody

Published: June 10, 2010
Updated: 10:03 a.m.

Immigrants on boat taken into custody

By SALVADOR HERNANDEZ
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

DANA POINT – Border Patrol officials have taken into custody several people who were spotted coming ashore in a boat early Thursday morning, authorities said.

The exact number of people who were taken into custody was not immediately known. Border Patrol officials spotted the boat off the coast before sunrise Thursday morning.

The boat ran aground near Pacific Coast Highway and Selva Road, said Lt. Jim England of the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

About 4:30 a.m., Border Patrol officials requested the help of the sheriff's Harbor Patrol to take boat from the shore, England said.

The people aboard the boat are suspected to have entered the country illegally, he said.

More information to come.

Contact the writer: shernandez@ocregister.com 949-454-7361

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Published: June 10, 2010
Updated: 11:34 a.m.
17 immigrants from boat taken into custody
By SALVADOR HERNANDEZ

Border Patrol officials seized several people suspected of entering the country illegally by boat in Dana Point.
COMMENTS 94

DANA POINT – Seventeen people have been taken into custody by the Border Patrol after authorities spotted them disembarking from a panga boat that had run ashore and getting into a van, authorities said.

Officials from the Border Patrol's Coastal Border Enforcement team first spotted a suspicious van in the area at about 1 a.m. and began following it, said Daryl Reed, spokesman for the agency.

Agents saw the van head toward the beach at Pacific Coast Highway and Selva Road, and that's when they saw the panga – a speedy, lightweight, flat-bottomed boat popularized in Baja California – heading toward the shore, Reed said.

More than a dozen people climbed aboard the van before Border Patrol agents stopped it within a mile from the beach, Reed said.

Officials have taken 17 people into custody and officials were checking their immigration status as of Thursday afternoon, he said.

At 4:30 a.m., Border Patrol officials requested the help of the sheriff's Harbor Patrol to take the boat from shore, said Lt. Jim England of the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

http://www.ocregister.com/news/boat-252 ... eople.html