Officials at the Los Angeles headquarters for Homeland Security Investigations announced the arrest of a dozen people entering the United States illegally in the early morning hours Monday.
In a post to X, formerly Twitter, HSI said they were alerted by officials at Customs and Border Protection to a boat traveling up the coast from Mexico to Long Beach.
Details are limited and it’s unclear exactly where HSI encountered the Mexican citizens, but they said operation unfolded early on Memorial Day and that the migrants had been “jettisoned by a pleasure craft.”
“These 12 subjects were arrested for being in unlawfully present in the U.S.,” officials added.
In a photo released by HSI, most of the migrants appear to be male with at least one female in the group. Many of them appear to have zip ties around their wrists, while they stand in front of a large white van, many of them draped with foil blankets.
The arrests come just days after an executive at a Newport Beach company who has been in the U.S. illegally and was previously deported in 2017 before making his way back to California was arrested for the alleged embezzlement of $7 million from his employer.
HSI Los Angeles was also recently involved in the arrest of 13 people linked to what officials described as a violent Armenian crime syndicate with ties to Russian mafia.
Authorities did not provide any information about the pleasure craft the migrants were reportedly on Monday morning, whether the vessel was registered in the U.S. or Mexico, nor is it clear if there were any attempts to contact the boat’s operator.
No information was provided on where federal immigration officials intend to detain the migrants before deportation back to Mexico.
