U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested 9 Mexican nationals, including one unaccompanied child, suspected of trying to illegally enter the United States in Dana Point Harbor on Jan. 23.
Officials said the Maritime Coordination Center notified Border Patrol of the possible smuggling event around 4:10 p.m., and CBP Air and Marine Operations seized the vessel.
“You know Dana Point Harbor, sleepy little harbor, we’ve never seen anything like this so it was quite odd,” said Donna Kalez, owner of Dana Wharf Sport Fishing and Whale Watching.
Kelz was at her shop on Thursday afternoon in Dana Point Harbor when the boat arrived at one of her docks.
“They pulled up right here to dock two, and then they came up the ramp,” Kalez explained to KTLA’s Chip Yost. “They came up that ramp and they exited right here.”
Donna said about a dozen people left before law enforcement located the other nine people still on the boat.
This was not the first time something like this happened in Orange County, and San Clemente Mayor Steve Knoblock said he is going to bring the issue up at the next council meeting because of several recent cases.
“What we’re hoping for is more community involvement,” said Mayor Knoblock. “Currently, the county sheriff department is being hamstrung, handcuffed, to prevent our local sheriff deputies – who we contract with for our police services – to prevent them from cooperating with the border patrol. Citizens aren’t prevented from doing that.”
Officials said the community can assist U.S. Customs and Border Protection and its law enforcement partners by reporting information or suspicious activity to the Joint Harbor Operations Center at 1-800-854-9834 Ext 1.
“We need to have the equivalent of a citizen patrol to simply – as these pangas are headed toward the beach – we need to have a hotline to the immigration folks to say we’ve got a group of illegal immigrants coming ashore and have their local border patrol people intercept these folks,” said the Mayor.
As for the incident in Dana Point, according to the Border Patrol, no other arrests have been made as of Monday, and an investigation remains ongoing.
