U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine crews intercepted a panga-style vessel on Saturday just west of San Clemente Island, a U.S. Navy-owned island in Los Angeles County, halting what CBP calls a “failed human smuggling attempt.”
According to CBP, which posted about the incident on Facebook, DHC-8 and Multi-Role Enforcement Aircraft crews coordinated with a Coastal Interceptor Vessel Crew on Saturday to intercept the vessel near San Diego.
After maintaining visual contact and vectoring support from the air, CBP agents intercepted the vessel just after 1:00 p.m. Onboard they found 23 migrants, all adult women and adult men, and turned them over to ICE in San Diego.
Back in February of 2025, Steve Knoblock, the mayor of San Clemente, an Orange County city just north of San Diego County, spoke with Fox News Digital. He alleged that there was an increase in panga-style ships that came ashore to drop off migrants before they “disappeared inland.”
On January 20 of this year, San Clemente adopted Resolution No. 26-17, authorizing City Manager Andy Hall to execute a site lease agreement with CBP, turning San Clemente into the first Orange County city to allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection to install a surveillance system to monitor their coast.
The proposal to give CBP broad oversight of its coastline was approved by San Clemente’s city council in a 3-1 vote, with one council member abstaining. The resolution also includes denying city staff and local law enforcement access to the monitoring area.
“This is not a swap for civil liberties versus privacy,” Mayor Knoblock said. “Our civil liberties do not go away just because the federal government is doing their job in a way that some of us might not like.”
