US Coast Guard warns migrants: Smugglers “do not value human life”

Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Mi­grants con­sid­er­ing il­le­gal en­try in­to the Unit­ed States through mar­itime routes are be­ing warned that crim­i­nal net­works trans­port­ing peo­ple by sea of­ten place lit­tle val­ue on hu­man life, with some smug­glers lock­ing women and chil­dren in­to con­fined spaces or aban­don­ing pas­sen­gers when dan­ger aris­es.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing and demon­stra­tion in San Diego Bay on Thurs­day, Justin Brooks said mi­grant smug­gling op­er­a­tions have re­peat­ed­ly cre­at­ed life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tions for peo­ple pay­ing thou­sands of dol­lars to make the jour­ney.

The warn­ing comes as the US Coast Guard and Bor­der Pa­trol con­tin­ue ex­pand­ing mar­itime en­force­ment us­ing fast in­ter­cep­tor ves­sels, aer­i­al sur­veil­lance, and tech­nolo­gies, in­clud­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence-sup­port­ed mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems and sen­sors de­signed to de­tect il­le­gal cross­ings.

Brooks said some of the most trou­bling cas­es in­volved mi­grants be­ing treat­ed as car­go rather than peo­ple.

He de­scribed one in­ter­dic­tion where au­thor­i­ties stopped a ves­sel car­ry­ing mi­grants hid­den be­low deck in dan­ger­ous con­di­tions.

"We had one in­stance where they crammed about 10 peo­ple in­to a for­ward com­part­ment. Women and chil­dren were a part of that group, and they shut the door and had it pad­locked," Brooks said.

Au­thor­i­ties said on­ly two sus­pect­ed smug­glers were vis­i­ble on the ves­sel while the mi­grants re­mained trapped be­low deck and un­able to es­cape if an emer­gency oc­curred.

"If that boat starts tak­ing on wa­ter or starts to sink, those in­di­vid­u­als are locked in there," he said.

Brooks said such in­ci­dents cre­ate a dual re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Coast Guard crews.

"We're charged with mar­itime bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, but we're al­so in charge of search and res­cue op­er­a­tions," he said.

He said many op­er­a­tions take place at night, with of­fi­cers pur­su­ing ves­sels in dif­fi­cult off­shore con­di­tions.

Brooks said il­le­gal mar­itime mi­gra­tion had pre­vi­ous­ly be­come sig­nif­i­cant­ly more ac­tive, with swim­mers, jet skis, plea­sure craft, and larg­er pan­ga ves­sels reg­u­lar­ly at­tempt­ing to evade au­thor­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to Brooks, stronger en­force­ment and the per­cep­tion of a greater risk of be­ing caught ap­pear to be dis­cour­ag­ing cross­ings.

Mi­grants of­ten pay thou­sands of dol­lars to smug­glers or car­tel-linked op­er­a­tors for pas­sage, mon­ey that is lost if they are in­ter­cept­ed.

"Why are you go­ing to waste mon­ey if you're hear­ing all the sto­ries that the Coast Guard's much more ef­fec­tive at stop­ping it?" he asked.

Brooks al­so is­sued a di­rect warn­ing to those con­sid­er­ing the jour­ney.

"Don't do it. It's un­safe. You're risk­ing your life," he said.

"Do it in as le­gal ways as pos­si­ble. Do not do it in il­lic­it means, es­pe­cial­ly on the wa­ter.

Mean­while, Christo­pher Cum­ber­land said en­force­ment agen­cies use net­works of radar sys­tems, cam­eras, ther­mal imag­ing de­vices, air­craft, and oth­er sen­sors to mon­i­tor ac­tiv­i­ty at sea.

He said small­er ves­sels, in­clud­ing jet skis, re­main dif­fi­cult to de­tect be­cause they can evade tra­di­tion­al radar sys­tems.

"You're re­ly­ing on cam­eras, FLIR, and vi­su­al cues," Cum­ber­land said.

Au­thor­i­ties are al­so us­ing new­er tech­nolo­gies, in­clud­ing un­manned sys­tems and AI-sup­port­ed sur­veil­lance ca­pa­bil­i­ties, to iden­ti­fy sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty.

Cum­ber­land said un­manned sur­face ves­sels and drone tech­nol­o­gy can re­main de­ployed for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods and alert au­thor­i­ties when cross­ings oc­cur.

De­spite tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances, he said the size of the mar­itime area re­mains one of the great­est chal­lenges.

He de­scribed wa­ters off South­ern Cal­i­for­nia as com­pa­ra­ble to search­ing for "a nee­dle in a haystack", where a sin­gle smug­gling ves­sel can blend in­to large vol­umes of le­git­i­mate traf­fic.

"It's a square mileage prob­lem," he said.

Cum­ber­land added that in­creased re­sources and sus­tained en­force­ment have sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced at­tempt­ed cross­ings.

In­ter­na­tion­al jour­nal­ists from Colom­bia, The Gam­bia, Kenya, Pe­ru, Spain, the Unit­ed King­dom, Nige­ria, Malaysia, Pak­istan, Chile, In­dia, and Ger­many have been tour­ing bor­der ar­eas be­tween Mex­i­co and the Unit­ed States. The vis­it was or­gan­ised by the US De­part­ment of State For­eign Press Cen­tre and co­or­di­nat­ed by Merid­i­an In­ter­na­tion­al Cen­ter.

Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va is on as­sign­ment as part of the Unit­ed States For­eign Press Cen­ters’ Se­cur­ing Our Bor­ders re­port­ing tour.