West
California Coast Guard captain sounds alarm as migrants from adversary countries inundate Pacific waters
Coast Guardsmen in Southern California are seeing an influx of migrant crossings by boat — and with them, more foreign nationals from U.S. adversary countries.
Over the last 90 days, the Coast Guard has recorded about 200 migrant boat encounters near the San Diego coast, amounting to approximately two migrant boat interventions per day, officials told Fox News Digital.
More daily migrant boat interdictions
“We see a myriad of elderly, male, female, children,” Coast Guard District 11 Capt. Jason Hagen told Fox News Digital. “We’re starting to see an uptick in other nationalities, as well, which is a…national security concern because it’s not just your economic Mexicans looking to come to the United States for work. It’s also … bad actors coming from other countries. We’ve seen nationalities to include Chinese, Russian, Uzbekistan[i], Pakistan[i]. It’s really all over the place.”
Hagen added that 10 or 15 years ago, most boats carried migrants from Mexico.
US COAST GUARD RESCUES 3 AFTER BOAT CAPSIZES OFF FLORIDA COAST: VIDEO
Over the last 90 days, the Coast Guard has recorded about 200 migrant boat encounters near the San Diego coast, amounting to approximately two migrant boat interventions per day, officials told Fox News Digital. (Coast Guard San Diego)
The Coast Guard captain attributes the recent uptick in boat encounters and “landing” encounters, when Coast Guardsmen find beached boats with abandoned life jackets, to increased land border security under the Trump administration.
“The smugglers have to move their operations somewhere.”
“What you’ve seen in the news certainly has an effect on the maritime environment,” Hagen explained. “It’s kind of like squeezing a balloon — you squeeze the balloon, and the air pushes to the other side, right? Well, that’s the same thing that’s happening with the migrant flow. They’re locking down the land border pretty good … where they used to get thousands a day. Now, they’re now down in the hundreds a day. So, the migrants have to go somewhere. The smugglers have to move their operations somewhere. And we’re starting to see an uptick in the maritime environment.”
The Coast Guard captain attributes the recent uptick in boat encounters and “landing” encounters as well as an increase in foreign nationals from China, Russia and Pakistan being smuggled by boat. (Coast Guard San Diego)
Hagen also noted the dangers of smuggling activity at sea.
“Smugglers are not in the business of safety. They’re in the business of money.”
“Just last night … we had a case where we interdicted a vessel 20 miles offshore with 16 people on board who … their boat was disabled at sea, and they [were] at sea for two days with no food or water. … Had we not found them, they could have just continued drifting west and further into the Pacific Ocean.”
BIDEN-ERA COAST GUARD FAILED TO ‘CONSISTENTLY’ STOP DRUG SMUGGLERS: WATCHDOG
The Coast Guard locates a vessel carrying 16 people that had been stranded at sea for two days. (Coast Guard San Diego)
In February, the Coast Guard San Diego announced that the Cutter Waesche crew offloaded more than 37,000 pounds of cocaine worth more than $275 million in San Diego. The offload was the result of 11 separate suspected drug smuggling vessel interdictions between December and February.
Incentives for smugglers, migrants
Republican California State Rep. Carl DeMaio told Fox News Digital that migrants are incentivized by taxpayer-funded benefits — such as housing, travel and food — when they arrive in the Golden State. On the flip side, smugglers are incentivized by the hefty payments migrants will make to be escorted across the border, or in this case, to U.S. shores.
WATCH: CA STATE REP. DEMAIO EXPLAINS HOW HUMAN SMUGGLERS HARM VICTIMS, TAXPAYERS
“Human trafficking is an evil enterprise. You’ve got these cartels and coyotes who are going … to these illegal immigrants saying, pay me $6,000, and I will bring you and your family into the United States,” DeMaio explained, adding that “this is a multibillion-dollar industry that preys on people.”
The California state representative added that the victims of the smuggling enterprise are both the migrants harmed along the journey and U.S. taxpayers.
BORDER SHERIFF IGNORES COUNTY’S NEW POLICY THAT BLOCKS COOPERATION WITH ICE IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
In February, the Coast Guard said the Cutter Waesche crew offloaded approximately more than 37,000 pounds of cocaine worth more than $275 million in San Diego. (Coast Guard San Diego)
“It is a dangerous journey, and it also is very predatory, because many of these individuals cannot afford the $6,000 to come across land. We are being told by Border Patrol that the cost of coming through the waterways on a boat can be $12[,000] to $15,000,” DeMaio said.
“It’s also dangerous because people have drowned. People have had to be rescued on boats that are not seaworthy. So, for all the fixation that California Democrats have with protecting people and regulating unsafe transportation and any unsafe industry, they’re the facilitators of the most evil enterprise of our time.”
San Diego’s non-cooperation with ICE
Meanwhile, local San Diego officials have made recent moves to block local officials from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
RETIRED COAST GUARD HELICOPTER COMMANDER DETAILS RISKS TO AIR CREWS FIGHTING LA FIRES
San Diego’s Board of Supervisors recently voted in favor of a resolution that says the county will not provide assistance or cooperation to ICE. (Daniel Knighton)
San Diego’s Board of Supervisors recently voted in favor of a resolution that says the county will not provide assistance or cooperation to ICE, “including by giving ICE agents access to individuals or allowing them to use County facilities for investigative interviews or other purposes, expending County time or resources responding to ICE inquiries or communicating with ICE regarding individuals’ incarceration status or release dates, or otherwise participating in any civil immigration enforcement activities.”
San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez pushed back, saying in a statement that her office sets its own rules.
Migrants line up at the southern border in San Diego. (Fox News)
“The board of supervisors does not set policy for the sheriff’s office. The sheriff, as an independently elected official, sets the policy for the sheriff’s office,” her office said in a December statement.
“As the sheriff of San Diego County, my No. 1 priority is protecting the safety and well-being of all residents of our diverse region. While protecting the rights of undocumented immigrants is crucial, it is equally important to ensure that victims of crimes are not overlooked or neglected in the process,” she said.
WATCH: SAN DIEGO DECLARES COUNTY A ‘SUPER SANCTUARY’
Hagen said the influx of migrant boats along the San Diego coast has not significantly overwhelmed Guardsmen and, in fact, has shone a spotlight on the issue and brought more resources to his team. He said the Coast Guard wants to strengthen its presence at the southern coastline “to protect the border security and territorial integrity of the United States.”
President Donald Trump’s recent immigration-related executive orders include the declaration of a national emergency at the border, halted refugee resettlement, ordered a removal process without asylum, ordered border wall reconstruction and deployed the military to the border.
In the first nine days of Trump’s second term, ICE arrested more than 7,400 illegal immigrants and placed nearly 6,000 ICE detainers on individuals believed to be in the country illegally.
Fox News’ Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
Read the full article from Here
Enter your email and we’ll send a secure one-click link to sign in.
FOX 5 San Diego is provided by Nexstar Media Group, Inc., and uses the My Nexstar sign-in, which works across our media network.
Learn more at nexstar.tv/privacy-policy.
FOX 5 San Diego is provided by Nexstar Media Group, Inc., and uses the My Nexstar sign-in, which works across our media network.
Nexstar Media Group, Inc. is a leading, diversified media company that produces and distributes engaging local and national news, sports, and entertainment content across its television and digital platforms. The My Nexstar sign-in works across the Nexstar network—including The CW, NewsNation, The Hill, and more. Learn more at nexstar.tv/privacy-policy.
Facing pressure from Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy to quickly finalize a bill to support the Alaska LNG megaproject, key members of the Senate on Tuesday expressed skepticism that they’ll finish the task before the session ends later this month.
Senate President Gary Stevens told reporters that he doesn’t think the lawmakers can finalize a bill by May 20, which could open the door to an immediate special session, or whenever the governor chooses to call one.
Senators are being asked to move quickly, creating the possibility of unexpected outcomes if a bill is passed now, said Stevens, a Kodiak Republican.
“There’s a lot of work yet to do, and I think you’re seeing the concern around this table of the mistakes we could easily make,” he said during a press conference alongside other leaders of the Senate Majority.
The concerns came one day after Dunleavy urged lawmakers in both chambers to quickly pass a bill to give the LNG developer Glenfarne a substantial property tax break, so North Slope gas can be delivered to Southcentral Alaska and overseas to large Asian buyers.
The governor argued Alaska LNG will generate billions of dollars in production taxes, gas royalties and other revenues, create thousands of jobs, lower energy costs and resolve a looming shortage of locally produced gas.
Dunleavy indicated that the Senate and House resources committees burdened the bill he introduced in March with excessive costs that would block the project. Although Dunleavy floated the idea of introducing his bill early in the session, he didn’t formally introduce it until March.
Those committee substitutes would sharply increase the alternative volumetric tax the governor had proposed to tax natural gas shipments in order to bring in more state revenue. That new “alternative volumetric tax” would replace the state’s property tax for the project.
Dunleavy said he will only support a bill that allows the project to receive financing to move forward. He said he would call a special session if a bill he doesn’t think makes the project workable fails to pass the Legislature.
Members of the Senate Resources Committee said Tuesday they lack a clear picture of the important financial details they need to determine what size of tax break the project should receive, if any.
Some of the missing pieces, they say, include a recent update to the project’s $46 billion price tag, a figure that’s been around for more than a decade, and a better understanding of the estimated cost of gas to Alaska ratepayers.
Before the project can receive a tax reduction, the developer needs “to help us with this bill, giving us actual numbers so that we can credibly set a realistic AVT, alternative volumetric tax,” said Sen. Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage and chair of Senate Resources.
Adam Prestidge, with project developer Glenfarne, told Senate Resources on Tuesday morning the company can share financial details with lawmakers if the state takes a stake in the project, under confidentiality agreements or confidential executive sessions.
He said that publicly releasing the project’s cost estimate would put the project at a competitive disadvantage at a time when it’s negotiating agreements with contractors for work, and purchase agreements with entities that would buy and sell the gas, he said.
In such cases, he’s seen the “counterparty try to back calculate what they think the cost of the product is that we’re selling, using what they’ve seen as public information, and it creates a real challenge for being able to commercialize the product,” he said.
Giessel said confidential agreements are problem for lawmakers.
“Confidential executive sessions put us at a real disadvantage because now we have to craft a bill based on what you’ve told us privately, and yet we can’t tell the public what those numbers are,” she said. “It doesn’t work very well.”
Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, and vice chair of Senate Resources, said he won’t vote on a bill that could remove potentially $1 billion in annual property tax revenue — referring to Dunleavy’s original version — without having solid numbers on the project.
“From my perspective, this bill should not go to the floor because, me personally, I don’t want to commit generations of Alaskans to billions of dollars in tax breaks without firm numbers,” he said.
Tim Fitzpatrick, a spokesperson with Glenfarne, said in a statement Tuesday that “the state, along with other potential investors, will have the information needed to make an informed investment decision.”
“The state has no financial risk in Alaska LNG and as testimony has made clear, publicly releasing sensitive cost information harms the project’s competitive position and ability to deliver reliable, low-cost energy for Alaskans,” he said.
“Alaska is rapidly running out of reliable, affordable energy, and state and local policymakers and the legislature’s own consultants have highlighted the need for tax reform for over a decade, during which no project has progressed,” he said.
-
San Diego, CA5 minutes agoSurveillance photos released of suspect who allegedly attacked girl in Poway
-
Milwaukee, WI11 minutes agoMilwaukee teacher in the running for ‘America’s Favorite Teacher’
-
Atlanta, GA17 minutes agoFIFA World Cup ticket prices climb for Atlanta matches
-
Minneapolis, MN23 minutes ago
Tom Homan says Trump administration is using "smarter enforcement" in Minneapolis
-
Indianapolis, IN29 minutes agoNew Prime Video doc: Kyle Larson’s maniacal mission to race Indy 500, Coca-Cola 600 in same day
-
Pittsburg, PA35 minutes agoPittsburgh weather will be cooler on Wednesday after morning rain showers
-
Augusta, GA41 minutes agoMissing 31-year-old last seen in Augusta on Sunday
-
Washington, D.C47 minutes agoLeonsis says DC could chase NBA, NHL All-Star games after Capital One Arena makeover – WTOP News
