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April 2006

Dangerous Water Crossings Expected to Rise

By Stew Magnuson

SAN DIEGO — Boatswain’s Mate Ryan Rinowski throttles down the Coast Guard response boat a few hundred yards short of the border south of San Diego.

On shore in the shadows of a bullfighting ring that towers over the beach, a green and white Border Patrol truck sits facing Mexico. A construction crew nearby works on replacing a border fence that extends less than 100 yards into the ocean.

The new wall is designed to prevent would-be migrants from easily wading over the border. Beyond the demarcation, open water is the only barrier. The dim outlines of Mexico’s Coronado Islands can be seen in the late morning haze. It’s a weekday and there isn’t much traffic.

While land-border crossings grab most of the media attention, almost forgotten by the public is the ocean route.

“Yeah, we don’t get a lot of minutemen out here,” jokes Boatswain’s Mate Patrick Blakeley, referring to the volunteers who have taken it upon themselves to set up citizen checkpoints in Arizona, California and Texas.

Illegal immigrants wishing to take their chances with a water crossing can face deadly consequences. While the Department of Homeland Security proceeds with plans to upgrade the rusting and inefficient fence along the land border across from Tijuana, Blakeley predicts Coast Guard and Border Patrol marine units will get busier as migrants search for the path of least resistance.

A 10-year court battle over how to reinforce the Tijuana fence ended in 2005, paving the way for the upgrades, which will include all-weather, easy access roads and improved surveillance. The Bush administration in its 2007 DHS budget proposal has requested $30 million to continue construction. The 2006 budget included $35 million for the project.

The myriad ways employed to make the dangerous trip over water is indicative of the lengths migrants and drug smugglers will go. Recently, several illegal aliens have been caught coming across on surfboards. Some navigate boats stripped down of everything but the basics, then beach them before making a mad dash. The largely uninhabited Coronados, which lie 13 miles southwest, are a common staging ground for such attempts.

Rinowski remembers a mission to help rescue two swimmers. Four Mexicans, including a brother and sister, put their clothes in trash bags and filled them with air to use them as makeshift floatation devices. Two of the party made it, but the woman and another man went missing. The missing woman’s brother turned himself in to the Border Patrol, hoping they could help him find his sister.

Rinowski found the man unconscious, and loaded him into a medical evacuation helicopter. The missing woman’s body was never found.

Blakeley and his crew head back to the Coast Guard station, stopping along the way to do some routine checks on pleasure boats. The busiest days are weekends, when smugglers of both humans and contraband attempt to blend in with the dozens of yachts and sports fishing boats cruising between the two countries.

“If you see nine guys standing in a boat, and there’s only one fishing pole and no tackle box, that’s usually a tip off,” Blakeley said.

The 25-foot response boat carries two 225-horsepower Honda engines and can skim along the surface at 46 knots. It can make a 180-degree turn in 25 feet. It carries a small radar to track vessels. A more powerful onshore radar, shared by the Coast Guard, Border Patrol, and other state and federal agencies, can peer further out to sea. Information collected from the land-based radar site is radioed to Coast Guard boats.

Border Patrol and Coast Guard radio systems are interoperable, but the two services, which both have jurisdiction in the San Diego waters, speak different radio languages. The Border Patrol uses the 10-code. When speaking to the Border Patrol, the crew uses plain English, Blakeley says.

Near the end of the shift, the Coast Guard crew comes up on a small boat in the harbor with four men aboard. The men keep looking back with what can only be described as nervous glances. They make an abrupt turn into a dock area where expensive yachts and harbor police boats are tied up. These actions are suspicious enough to stop them and have a chat, Blakeley decides.

As the men tie up on a dock, the response boat pulls in behind them. Blakeley asks a few pointed questions in a friendly way. Only one man speaks English. Two of the party do not have any identification, which is not against the law. However, claiming to be a U.S. citizen, when one is not, is a federal violation. On this point, two of the men are evasive. Blakeley calls the Border Patrol for assistance. Within a half hour, they arrive.

One of the men says he has immigration paperwork pending. If that’s the case, he’s not allowed on U.S. soil, the Border Patrol agent informs him. Two of the men are taken in for questioning.

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