While the concern rises on dangerous sea passages, the American representative Mike Levin said this week that he planned to ask the congress $ 60 million in federal funding to install surveillance towers along the San Diego coast.
This decision comes a week after the death of three people when a panga with 18 people on board capsized off the Côte de Del. A 10 -year -old girl has also disappeared and is presumed dead.
“The accident of last week shows us that there is much more than we still have to do,” said Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, at a press conference on Mars Mars on Monday. “While our land border is tightening … The bad actors will continue to explore new ways of entering the United States”
Levin said he had asked for funding for autonomous surveillance towers to be deployed along maritime borders. These would include additional cameras, radar and infrared technology to help intercept maritime threats, he said.
Such technology is currently used on the American-Mexican land border, according to a spokesperson for Border Patrol. Solar energy towers reach up to 33 feet high and have a range of 3 miles in diameter, according to the American customs and border protection website.
The cameras use artificial intelligence, said the agency, to sort the real concerns of false positives. While a group or something of interest moves, surveillance is a turn back in turn, “keeping an electronic eyes on the situation at any time,” said the agency.
When the towers catch something note, the field agents get an alert on their phones or tablets.
There are towers for land use and maritime use, said Dave Maass, director of investigations at Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non -profit organization that recommends digital life. He said the United Kingdom is using similar technology to monitor the English chain.
Locally, he said, there is at least one maritime camera on private property in Del Mar, north of Dog Beach, and another at Friendship Park along the border in San Diego.
Maass said that it was not clear what the sea towers look at, that they just look towards the water or also see people on the beaches.
“I don’t think people have a good idea of what they capture and what they see,” said Maass. “There should be a certain transparency on this subject, because if they capture people on the beach, questions must be asked.”
Levin said he was informed of last week’s deadly incident by CBP air and sea operations, as well as the American Coast Guard. He then asked officials what was necessary to prevent such incidents.
He said he hoped that the autonomous system would be dissuasive for smugglers, who generally wait for bad weather to slip to the ground. With bad weather, higher security risks.
“A common denominator is currently hindering prohibition and response efforts is heavy fog or problems related to weather conditions,” he said. “It was the body last week. These laps would help to fill the gaps in our detection efforts and make our borders safer. ”
As the number of migrant meetings between the land entrance ports has decreased, officials said that sea passages could become more common.
Since the start of the Trump administration, the American Coast Guard has tripled its resources on the southern border “to improve border security, the application of immigration and to protect the territorial integrity of the United States,” said the agency at the end of March.
A devastated family
Last week’s incident was the worst maritime smuggling disaster in the region since 2023, when eight people, all Mexican nationals, died after two ships capsized off the coast of Black’s beach in La Jolla.
In the last tragedy, three people – two Mexican nationals and a 14 -year -old boy from India – died at the beach. A fourth, the 10 -year -old sister of India’s boy, is disappeared and presumed dead.
The parents of the children were one of four people taken to the Jolla hospital, where their father was in a coma. The hospital refused on Monday to provide an update on the condition of patients.
The Indian Express information site interviewed the man’s uncle in a coma, which said that his nephew had owned a business, but the pandemic left it in financial difficulty.
The uncle, identified as Anil Patel, said the last time he knew, the four -year -old family had gone to London with a visitor’s visa in October. He assumed that the family would return. “They didn’t tell us that they planned to enter the United States illegal,” he said.
Patel said the San Francisco Indian consulate informed his family of the death of the two children.
Recent smuggling attempts
Del Mar has been the site of many sea passages in recent years – Del Mar lifeguard, Jon Edelbrock, said that he had responded to the “hundreds” – and Monday, city officials publicly supported Levin’s efforts to better secure the coast.
“It is important to emphasize that incidents like these are dangerous and to put all those involved at risk,” said Del Mar mayor, Terry Gaasterland. “We support efforts to justify the criminals involved in these human smuggling activities and to prevent this activity from continuing in the future.”
From May 4 to Saturday, there were 11 maritime smuggling incidents on the southwest border, according to weekly Coastal Guard data in South California. Nine other cases were reported the previous week, involving 52 people.
During a 13 -hour period on Saturday, the coastal guard staff banned three alleged smuggling boats off the coast of San Diego and held 18 people, officials said. A captain intentionally failed his boat while being prosecuted by a coast guard cutter, while another stopped until a crew member of the Coast Guard fired copper slugs in the engine of the boat to deactivate it.
The first incident started after a 24-foot cabin cruiser was spotted around 4:40 am by a coast cup which activated its blue lights while trying to stop it. The captain of the boat headed for shore and intentionally ran into the sand near Windansea Beach, where 13 people jumped and started running.
Internal security agents on shore were able to apprehend five men from Mexico, a woman from Cuba and a woman from Guatemala. Six fled, said officials.
The second incident occurred around 2:40 p.m. when a Coast Guard crew made a routine safety boarding on a 20 -foot craftsmanship south of Point Loma. The boat showed no registration and the three people on board were not allowed to enter the United States, the three were detained and transferred to internal security officials.
The final incident occurred around 5:50 p.m. when the authorities spotted an 18 -foot Cuddy hut traveling north near Point Loma and looked with surveillance cameras while entering San Diego bay, officials said.
A crew of coastal guard boats went to intercept the ship, but the captain left. The crew used verbal commands and fired several warning shots to try to have the captain stop. When this did not work, a crew member pulled four copper slugs in the engine to deactivate it. The crew went up on the boat and found eight people on board, including five men, a woman and two teenagers. All were detained.
In addition to the request for funding, the member of the Congress is also part of a bipartite group of legislators who, in February, reintroduced a bill which aims to extend the jurisdiction of the CBP from 12 to 24 sea miles offshore.
“More specifically, this will increase detection, ban and, ultimately, the prosecution of those who will try to bring in illegal cargoes (narcotics, loose species, firearms and victims of human trafficking) in the nation,” said Levin’s office in a press release.
The San Diego County supervisor, Jim Desmond, a republican who presents himself for the Levin Congress district, described the effort “too little, too late”.
“Mike Levin was an accomplice of the chaos we see today,” Desmond said in a statement. “It is not leadership – it is control of political damage.”
Levin said on Monday that he planned to submit the request for federal funding “in the coming days”.
The editor Karen Kucher contributed to this report.
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