2. Ask if You’re Free to Leave
If an officer says yes, walk away calmly. If they say no, you have the right to remain silent.

3. You Do Not Have to Answer Questions
You are not required to share your immigration status. You can say:
👉 “I am exercising my right to remain silent.”

4. Do Not Show False Documents
Never present fake papers. It can make your case worse.

5. Ask for a Warrant
If ICE comes to your home, you do not have to open the door unless they show a judicial warrant signed by a judge (not just an ICE form).

6. You Have the Right to an Attorney
You can ask to speak to a lawyer before answering questions. You do not have to sign anything without legal advice.

7. Document the Encounter
If safe, write down the officer’s name, badge number, and details of the stop.

Resources for Inland Empire Residents

• ACLU of Southern California: aclusocal.org
• Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice: (951) 394-2238
• Know Your Rights cards (printable in English & Spanish) available online.

The post Know Your Rights if Stopped by ICE or Border Patrol appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

According to a statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, agents from the Newton-Azrak Border Patrol Station stopped the tractor-trailer around 6:40 p.m. on April 8 while it was traveling northbound on Interstate 215 in Murrieta. A K-9 unit was called to the scene and alerted agents to the possible presence of narcotics.

Upon further inspection, agents discovered suspicious compartments in the truck’s diesel tanks. The driver, vehicle and suspected narcotics were transported to the station for further investigation. There, agents found that the tanks contained liquid methamphetamine stored in aftermarket compartments.

Hazardous materials personnel and Homeland Security Investigations agents assisted in extracting the narcotics, ultimately recovering 22 five-gallon buckets of liquid methamphetamine, weighing a total of 761 pounds. Officials estimate the street value at approximately $684,900.

The driver, who was not identified, was turned over to HSI and faces federal prosecution for possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance. The semi-truck was seized by authorities.

“Foreign terrorist organizations will use every trick in the book to get their drugs into the country,” Acting Chief Patrol Agent Jeffrey D. Stalnaker said in the release. “The agents of San Diego Sector are the best in the business and will continue to target, interdict and dismantle these organizations.”

Prior to Tuesday’s seizure, San Diego Sector agents had confiscated 347 pounds of methamphetamine during fiscal year 2025, along with 1,415 pounds of cocaine, 177 pounds of fentanyl and 19 pounds of heroin, according to the agency.

The post San Diego agents intercept $684K worth of meth in truck appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The Border Patrol does not dispute the conditions at the camps, where migrants wait under open skies or sometimes in tents or structures made of tree branches while short on food and water. The migrants, who crossed the border illegally, are waiting there for Border Patrol agents to arrest and process them. The question is whether they are in legal custody.

That would start a 72-hour limit on how long children can be held and require emergency medical services and guarantees of physical safety, among other things.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said evidence presented by migrant advocacy groups appeared to support the definition of legal custody. “Are they free to leave?” she asked.

“As long as they do not proceed further into the United States,” answered Justice Department attorney Fizza Batool.

Gee, who was appointed by former Democratic President Bill Clinton, acknowledged it was complicated — “like dancing on the head of a pin” — because some children arrive on their own at the camps and are not sent there by Border Patrol agents.

Advocates are seeking to enforce a 1997 court-supervised settlement on custody conditions for migrant children, which includes the time limit and services including toilets, sinks and temperature controls. Gee did not rule after a half-hour hearing in Los Angeles.

Children traveling alone must be turned over within 72 hours to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which generally releases them to family in the United States while an immigration judge considers asylum. Asylum-seeking families are typically released in the U.S. while their cases wind through courts.

The legal challenge focuses on two areas in California: one between two border fences in San Diego and another in a remote mountainous region east of San Diego. When the number of migrants was particularly high last year, they waited for several days to be arrested and processed by overwhelmed Border Patrol agents. From May to December, agents distributed colored wristbands to prioritize whom to process first.

Advocates say the Border Patrol often directs migrants to the camps, sometimes even driving them there. Agents are often seen nearby keeping a loose watch until buses and vans arrive.

The Justice Department, which rejects advocates’ label of “open-air detention sites,” says smugglers send migrants to camps. It says agents giving them water and snacks is a humanitarian gesture and that any agent who sends, or even escorts, migrants there is “no different than any law enforcement officer directing heightened traffic to avoid disorder and disarray.”

The Border Patrol generally arrests migrants at the camps within 12 hours of encountering them, down from 24 hours last year, Brent Schwerdtfeger, a senior official in the agency’s San Diego sector, said in a court filing. The agency has more than doubled the number of buses in the San Diego area to 15 for speedier processing.

On Friday, 33 migrants, including two small children, waited between border walls in San Diego until agents came to ask they empty their pockets, remove shoelaces and submit to weapons searches before being taken in vans to a holding station. They were primarily from China and India, with others from Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Agents spoke to them in English.

Pedro Rios, a volunteer with American Friends of Service Committee, delivered turkey sandwiches and hot tea and coffee through spaces in the border wall. He gave pain relievers and ointment to a limping Chinese woman who had fallen from the wall.

Kedian William, 38, said she left a 10-year-old daughter with family in Jamaica because she couldn’t afford the journey, including airfare to Mexico, but that asthma would have made the trip difficult for her child anyway. She planned to apply for asylum and settle with family in New York, having fled her home after her sister-in-law, her sister-in-law’s husband their child were killed last year.

William said she attempted to reach the camp on Wednesday but fled back into Tijuana to avoid Mexican authorities in pursuit. She tried again a day later, waiting six hours on U.S. soil for agents to pick her up for processing.

The post Judge questions Border Patrol stand that it’s not required to care for children at migrant camps appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The Border Patrol does not dispute the conditions at the camps, where migrants wait under open skies or sometimes in tents or structures made of tree branches while short on food and water. The migrants, who crossed the border illegally, are waiting there for Border Patrol agents to arrest and process them. The question is whether they are in legal custody.

That would start a 72-hour limit on how long children can be held and require emergency medical services and guarantees of physical safety, among other things.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said evidence presented by migrant advocacy groups appeared to support the definition of legal custody. “Are they free to leave?” she asked.

“As long as they do not proceed further into the United States,” answered Justice Department attorney Fizza Batool.

Gee, who was appointed by former Democratic President Bill Clinton, acknowledged it was complicated — “like dancing on the head of a pin” — because some children arrive on their own at the camps and are not sent there by Border Patrol agents.

Advocates are seeking to enforce a 1997 court-supervised settlement on custody conditions for migrant children, which includes the time limit and services including toilets, sinks and temperature controls. Gee did not rule after a half-hour hearing in Los Angeles.

Children traveling alone must be turned over within 72 hours to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which generally releases them to family in the United States while an immigration judge considers asylum. Asylum-seeking families are typically released in the U.S. while their cases wind through courts.

The legal challenge focuses on two areas in California: one between two border fences in San Diego and another in a remote mountainous region east of San Diego. When the number of migrants was particularly high last year, they waited for several days to be arrested and processed by overwhelmed Border Patrol agents. From May to December, agents distributed colored wristbands to prioritize whom to process first.

Advocates say the Border Patrol often directs migrants to the camps, sometimes even driving them there. Agents are often seen nearby keeping a loose watch until buses and vans arrive.

The Justice Department, which rejects advocates’ label of “open-air detention sites,” says smugglers send migrants to camps. It says agents giving them water and snacks is a humanitarian gesture and that any agent who sends, or even escorts, migrants there is “no different than any law enforcement officer directing heightened traffic to avoid disorder and disarray.”

The Border Patrol generally arrests migrants at the camps within 12 hours of encountering them, down from 24 hours last year, Brent Schwerdtfeger, a senior official in the agency’s San Diego sector, said in a court filing. The agency has more than doubled the number of buses in the San Diego area to 15 for speedier processing.

On Friday, 33 migrants, including two small children, waited between border walls in San Diego until agents came to ask they empty their pockets, remove shoelaces and submit to weapons searches before being taken in vans to a holding station. They were primarily from China and India, with others from Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Agents spoke to them in English.

Pedro Rios, a volunteer with American Friends of Service Committee, delivered turkey sandwiches and hot tea and coffee through spaces in the border wall. He gave pain relievers and ointment to a limping Chinese woman who had fallen from the wall.

Kedian William, 38, said she left a 10-year-old daughter with family in Jamaica because she couldn’t afford the journey, including airfare to Mexico, but that asthma would have made the trip difficult for her child anyway. She planned to apply for asylum and settle with family in New York, having fled her home after her sister-in-law, her sister-in-law’s husband their child were killed last year.

William said she attempted to reach the camp on Wednesday but fled back into Tijuana to avoid Mexican authorities in pursuit. She tried again a day later, waiting six hours on U.S. soil for agents to pick her up for processing.

The post Judge questions Border Patrol stand that it’s not required to care for children at migrant camps appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will issue an order this week about how migrant children are treated under a public health order that has prevented people from seeking asylum at the nation’s borders, a Justice Department attorney said Tuesday.

The comment by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Stoltz at a court hearing in Fort Worth, Texas, comes as the Biden administration faces pressure from pro-immigration allies to lift the last major Trump-era restrictions on asylum at the border.

Stoltz told a federal judge that the CDC will release “a new order on the subject of the children” by the end of the week. It will revise a Biden administration policy announced in February that exempts children crossing alone from the ban on asylum.

Stoltz did not offer additional details on the changes during a hearing on a lawsuit that Texas brought to compel enforcement of the public health order that former President Donald Trump’s administration used to quickly expel people from the country during the coronavirus pandemic.

The government attorney said the CDC order this week will largely render Texas’ arguments moot. He did not elaborate, and CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency had “nothing more to add right now.”

The CDC, in a three-paragraph order signed by its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, on Feb. 11, exempted unaccompanied children from being expelled to Mexico until “a forthcoming public health reassessment,” which has yet to be published. Texas argues in its lawsuit that the administration’s justification was insufficient.

Higher COVID-19 vaccination rates have brought increasing pressure on the Biden administration to lift the public health order that was always intended as a temporary measure during the pandemic. While the administration has exempted unaccompanied children, some families and nearly all adults traveling alone are expelled from the United States — often to Mexico within two hours — without a chance to seek asylum.

The Associated Press reported last year that then-Vice President Mike Pence directed the CDC to use emergency powers to effectively seal America’s borders, overruling agency scientists who said there was no evidence the action would slow COVID-19.

Lifting the ban could encourage more people to come to the border to seek asylum at a time when the U.S. is under mounting strain. The U.N. refugee agency reported last month that the U.S. was once again the top destination for asylum-seekers in 2020, with about 250,000 new claims filed, more than twice as high as second-place Germany.

Texas, which has the busiest corridor for illegal border crossings, is seeking a court order forcing the federal government to cease what state Deputy Attorney General Aaron Reitz called “de facto non-enforcement” of the asylum ban. Reitz argued that the Biden administration’s posture “threatens the health and safety of all Texans.”

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, a Trump appointee, questioned Stoltz about the timing of the new order and asked that the government inform him as soon as it is issued. Pittman did not rule on the request for an injunction but said he will put out a decision “as quickly as I can.”

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post US says order coming this week on border asylum restrictions appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

On Tuesday, June 15th, 2021, around 4:40 PM, Border Patrol agents working routine patrol, in plain clothes and driving unmarked patrol vehicles, encountered a suspect who they had been informed was armed and wanted for assault with a deadly weapon by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. The suspect was driving southbound on Interstate 15, near Lake Elsinore, CA. Agents followed the suspect for several minutes before he exited the highway and parked at a gas station. When agents attempted to take the man into custody, he drove his vehicle toward the agents and struck two Border Patrol vehicles as he fled the area. Border Patrol requested assistance from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

Around 4:50 PM, deputies from the Southwest Sheriff’s Station, along with the Special Enforcement Bureau, located the wanted suspect vehicle in the city of Temecula. A vehicle stop was initiated but the suspect failed to yield. The suspect fled at a high rate of speed and a pursuit was initiated. The pursuit travelled through multiple different areas within Temecula and Menifee and onto Interstate 215, travelling both north and south and at times reaching high rates of speed into oncoming traffic.

As the suspect vehicle was travelling northbound on Interstate 215, the vehicle began to slow down and ultimately came to a stop near the center median, just south of Ethanac Road. The suspect fled the vehicle on foot, jumped over the center median and ran into the southbound lanes of Interstate 215 armed with a handgun. At that time, a deputy involved shooting occurred.

Deputies immediately rendered medical aid to the suspect who was transported to a local hospital. While at the hospital, the suspects health declined and he ultimately succumbed to his injuries.

No deputies were injured during this incident. There are no outstanding suspects and there is no threat to the public.

The involved deputies will be placed on administrative leave per Department policy. The names of the involved deputies will not be released at this time.

An Investigator from the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office will lead this investigation, aided by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department Force Investigations Detail. This is an active and on-going investigation. Anyone with information regarding this incident is encouraged to contact District Attorney Investigator Munoz at 951-955-2777 or Investigator Gomez at 951-955-2777.

For media inquiries regarding this incident please contact the Media Information Bureau.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Deputy Involved Shooting appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Six years had passed since Glenda Valdez kissed her toddler goodbye and left for the United States — six years since she held Emely in her arms.

But here she was, at Texas’ Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, tearfully embracing the little girl she left behind. And it happened only because she had glimpsed a televised photo of Emely, part of an Associated Press story on young people crossing the Mexican border alone.

“I love you so much,” she whispered in Spanish in her 9-year-old daughter’s ear. “My God, thank you.”

It was a fairy tale ending — for the moment — to a complicated story, one that began in Honduras and with an unhappy relationship, according to Valdez, 26.

Emely’s father, she said, was absent and did not provide for them. When Valdez emigrated in pursuit of a better life, the girl was left in the custody of Valdez’s mother. But Emely’s father took her back.

Valdez said she only had sporadic contact with her daughter — the father preferred that they not speak regularly. Every so often, Valdez would get a video call; eventually, Emely told her that she had a new stepmother who was not kind to her.

Emely told her that her father — seeing that she was unhappy with her life in that household — had decided to send her away, without telling her where. He placed her in the care of an adult who over several weeks helped her journey to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Around midnight as the day turned to May 13, Border Patrol agents encountered Emely in La Joya, on the Texas side of the Rio Grande Valley. She had been walking in the brush for six hours with a group of strangers and had lost a shoe in the mud. She was sobbing uncontrollably.

“I was thirsty and we didn’t have anything to drink and I didn’t like it and I didn’t know where I was going,” Emely said in Spanish on Sunday.

When the agents found her, she said she had lost her mother’s number, and did not know where her mother lived. Desperate, she gave reporters details she thought might identify her mom: “Her hair is curly, but sometimes she straightens it. And she has a lip ring.”

Her mother was expecting her, she said. But Valdez said Sunday she had no idea her child had been sent to cross the border.

Valdez was at her home in Austin, watching a Univision newscast one afternoon in May, when she saw the picture of Emely in a red hoodie. She knew at once that it was her daughter. Desperate, she immediately began making calls to U.S. authorities, the network and refugee agencies.

“I was like in shock, honestly, because imagine you are watching the TV and you suddenly see your daughter,” Valdez said. “And then even more to see her crying and everything she was saying broke my heart, honestly, everything she said there, that she was upset and crying and all that, and to see her image, barefoot and all was very difficult for me.”

Emely said she was taken to a group home. But Valdez didn’t know that, and for weeks she said she got only vague answers to her pleas for information. Be patient, she was told.

“I was just traumatized, like I spent many days crying, watching her video, looking through her photos and crying and crying and crying,” Valdez said.

Last Wednesday, she got a call: Emely was in a government shelter. They would be reunited soon. And then, on Saturday, she was told to meet her daughter at the airport the next day. At the appointed time, she raced to the bottom of the stairs at the crowded arrivals terminal to hug her daughter.

Emely is part of a large increase in children traveling alone who are entering the United States from Mexico — nearly 19,000 in March (the highest number on record) and nearly 17,200 in April (the second highest). Almost one of every three unaccompanied children appearing at the border is from Honduras, second only to Guatemala.

Guided by federal law and a decades-old court settlement, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department seeks to place unaccompanied children in the “least restrictive setting” possible, which, in the vast majority of cases is a parent or close relative already living in the United States. It took an average of 35 days to place children in a home at the end of May; Emely was reunited with her mother 10 days less than that.

Children are typically released with instructions to appear in immigration court, where a judge rules on their asylum claims. Decisions can take years — the court system has a backlog of 1.3 million cases.

While Emely awaits her court date, the girl has moved in with Valdez, her husband and their two daughters, who are excited to get to know this new sister they had only met virtually.

And to Valdez’s immense satisfaction, she is reconnecting with the little girl she said goodbye to six years ago.

“Well, the plan is everything that God wants and to be with her here,” Valdez said.

“To never be separated again. To ask God that we may never be separated again. To give her all of the love that I haven’t been able to give her. Everything that she is missing. To give her everything I can and to take her to school. That she has a better future, to remedy a little of what has happened.”

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Tearful reunion after mom saw AP photo of daughter at border appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A man accused of piloting a boat overloaded with migrants that crashed into rocks off San Diego’s coast and killed three people kneed a U.S. Border Patrol agent in the face who was trying to put a leg shackle on him on the beach, authorities said.

Investigators said in an affidavit filed Tuesday in federal court in San Diego that the agent was not seriously injured but the hit left a red mark on his forehead.

A total of 33 people were pulled from the water after the 40-foot (12-meter) trawling-style boat smashed into rocks and broke apart Sunday, tossing people into the rough sea off Cabrillo National Monument. Besides the three who died, two others were still hospitalized, including one in critical condition.

Investigators say Antonio Hurtado, a U.S. citizen, was piloting the boat, and he was arrested on suspicion of bringing in or harboring undocumented immigrants and assaulting an officer, according to the affidavit. Twenty-one passengers identified Hurtado in a photo lineup as the captain of the vessel.

He was treated in a hospital and turned over to immigration authorities. His lawyer, Melissa Bobrow, declined to comment.

The migrants told investigators they paid between $15,000 and $18,000 each to be smuggled into the U.S. on the boat.

All but one were Mexican citizens, including two 15-year-olds who were traveling alone, a boy and a girl. A Guatemalan man remains hospitalized.

Maria Eugenia Chavez Segovia, 41; Maricela Hernandez Sanchez, 35; and Victor Perez Degollado, 29, drowned after suffering blunt-force injuries to their heads, according the San Diego County medical examiner’s office.

Navy rescue swimmer Cale Foy did his best to save them. He was hiking with his wife and three kids when he noticed the vessel approaching the rocky, wind-swept San Diego coastline as 5- to 8-foot (1.5- to 2-meter) waves were crashing.

A moment later, a wave slammed the boat, and Foy saw it hit the rocks. He spotted people tossed into the rough sea before the vessel broke into pieces.

“All of a sudden, we see people jumping into the waves and on top of the rocks, and it was: ‘I have to be there. I have to help,'” Foy said.

He immediately ran toward the shore in what would become the most dramatic rescue mission of his 17-year career. Foy and another young sailor who was also out hiking and is in basic training as a Navy SEAL recruit were among the first to respond.

“We could hear people frantic, kind of chaos, screaming,” Foy said.

In a T-shirt, pants and hiking boots, Foy ran into the waves, took a chance and dove under, praying that he would not be slammed into rocks below.

After Foy and the Navy SEAL recruit got past the pounding surf, they came upon a large piece of the boat’s cabin and grabbed it to rest.

Then the two headed toward the screams. They helped three men who survived get to the wreckage.

Then Foy saw a woman face down in the water, wearing a life preserver. She was unconscious.

Foy used his body to keep her head out of the water, carrying her on his chest as he swam toward the floating debris. He placed her on it and then pulled it toward a lifeguard boat that had arrived.

He got her into the boat, hopped in and started CPR on her as they rolled over the waves.

Foy traveled with the lifeguard boat back to land and continued to do CPR for 20 more minutes.

Despite his efforts, she died, he said.

Foy stayed for another two hours on the dock, helping tend to people brought in on the lifeguard boats.

In the end, Foy and the Navy SEAL recruit got six migrants to the floating wreckage. Four of them survived.

“We just jumped in and helped out with what we could,” Foy said.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Authorities: Man who piloted boat that crashed hit US agent appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A tractor-trailer slams into an SUV at an intersection on a remote California desert highway, killing 13 of 25 people crammed inside the late model Ford Expedition.

A man dangles a toddler over a border wall near Santa Teresa, New Mexico, allowing her to fall on her face before he disappears into Mexico.

A 40-foot (12.2-meter) cabin cruiser overloaded with 32 people capsizes just off the San Diego coast, killing three and critically injuring another person. The others aboard survived without major injuries.

The incidents, which occurred over the last two months, show how smugglers put migrants at extraordinary peril for profits, whether by car, on foot or at sea.

The Coast Guard on Monday ended its search for survivors of the San Diego boat wreck, which happened on a bright Sunday morning near tidepools of Cabrillo National Monument, a popular spot for tourists and hikers.

The vessel had the hallmarks of a smuggling attempt from Mexico gone awry, though authorities stopped short of confirming it. The boat captain was in custody but Kelly Thornton, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego, declined to comment, saying prosecutors were “carefully reviewing the matter.”

The Mexican consulate in San Diego said it was awaiting word if any passengers were Mexican citizens.

The SUV crash occurred in March and authorities said it was one of two vehicles crammed with occupants that entered the U.S. through an opening cut into the border wall. All were being smuggled. Those inside the other SUV were not involved in the accident and were picked up by the Border Patrol.

The toddler in the New Mexico incident was believed dropped into the country by a smuggler and survived the fall.

Smuggling off the California coast has ebbed and flowed over the years but has long been a risky alternative for migrants to avoid heavily guarded land borders. Small boats with single- or twin-engines known as “pangas” enter from Mexico in the dead of night, sometimes charting hundreds of miles north. Recreational boats, like the one that capsized Sunday, try to mix in unnoticed with fishing and pleasure vessels during the day.

The Border Patrol tallied 1,273 smuggling arrests on the California coast during the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, a 92% increase from the same period a year earlier. Since Oct. 1, it has made 909 arrests.

“The smugglers, they don’t care about the people they’re exploiting,” said Jeff Stephenson, a Border Patrol agent and spokesman. “All they care about is profit. To them, these people are just commodities. You can see that in the way they treat them — inadequate safety equipment, really poorly equipped vessels.”

Migrants sometimes get lifejackets but they tend to be old and tattered, Stephenson said.

Boats are known to launch in Mexico from Playas de Rosarito, a city that borders Tijuana and is popular with American expatriates. It’s about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of San Diego.

There are many secluded, private beaches with gated entrances between high-rises with magnificent ocean views, some only partially built because funds dried up during construction. Popotla, a fishing hamlet where narrow streets are lined with vendors selling a wide variety of local catch, is favored among smugglers for its large, sandy beach and relatively gentle waves.

In October, a 42-year-old Mexican man was sentenced to nearly seven years in federal prison for his role as captain of a panga boat with six migrants aboard, two of whom died after the engine stalled in rough waters off the coast of Imperial Beach, California. The pilot, who had a handheld GPS device, told investigators he was paid $5,000 to guide the boat, which launched in Ensenada, a port city south of Playas de Rosarito.

The same pilot was convicted of smuggling for leading a vessel to Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station near Los Angeles, in January 2019. Police found 14 people hiding amid brush and buildings in Huntington Beach.

On Friday, the Border Patrol alerted the public and boaters to increased surveillance in San Diego over the weekend, one day after intercepting a panga-type vessel off the San Diego coast. All 21 people aboard — 15 Mexican men and six Mexican women — were taken into custody and two were likely to be charged with smuggling crimes.

The pilot in Sunday’s wreck was likely trying to blend in with pleasure craft, said Mike Unzueta, who witnessed an increase in marijuana smuggling from Mexico at sea when he led U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations unit in San Diego in the late 2000s, then a shift to people and finally to hard narcotics.

“It’s a tragic story and it’s a sad, sad story but it just underscores the risks that desperate people are willing to take,” he said.

The original call was for a handful of people overboard, said San Diego Lifeguard Services Lt. Rick Romero, who was among the first on scene. There were life preservers on board, but it wasn’t known how many or whether any passengers were wearing them.

“There are people in the water, drowning, getting sucked out the rip current there,” Romero said.

The passengers got lucky that a Navy sailor was in the area with his family and jumped in to assist. Cale Foy, an active duty rescue swimmer, told KGTV-TV in San Diego that he and a Navy SEAL trainee who was also there instantly knew what to do.

“Before we jumped in the water we looked at each other and said, ‘Yeah I’m comfortable going into the water and shore break, washing machine effect is what we call it, and he’s like, ’Yeah, I’m good for it too,’ so we smiled at each other and we jumped in and did what we had to do,” Foy said.

If confirmed the survivors were trying to enter the country illegally they likely will be taken to Mexico and won’t face any penalties in the U.S.

Under pandemic-related public health orders in effect since March 2020. Mexicans and people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador who are in the country illegally are immediately expelled to Mexico without an opportunity to seek asylum.

President Joe Biden exempted unaccompanied children from expulsions but the vast majority of adults are still quickly removed from the country without facing legal consequences, prompting many to try again until they succeed.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post San Diego boat wreck kills 3, shows risks of ocean smuggling appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) — A federal emergency shelter in California is starting to receive immigrant children from border facilities in what advocates hope will be an improvement in their care.

As many as 150 children were expected Thursday at the Long Beach Convention Center at the latest in a series of sites set up across the country following a rise in the number of immigrant children stopped alone on the Mexico border, the Department of Health and Human Services said.

After border facilities grew crowded with children who said they had not been given showers for days, the department started opening large-scale temporary shelters to house these minors until they can be released to relatives who can care for them in the U.S.

The center in Long Beach is expected to be able to hold up to 1,000 children. Officials were given a tour of the site, which had books, stuffed animals and backpacks laid out on cots and butterfly decorations displayed on the walls. There was a recreation area with soccer nets, board games and large screens to watch movies.

Children will receive three or four hours of daily classroom time and get to play outdoors. They are expected to be released to family on average in a week to 10 days, Mayor Robert Garcia said. He added that he was told by federal officials that the site could prove to be a model for how to make the shelters as welcoming as possible.

“It looks like a place where children can be,” Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, told reporters after the tour.

With more than 20,000 immigrant children currently in government custody, U.S. officials have been scrambling to open such facilities.

The government failed to prepare for an increase in mostly Central American children traveling alone as President Joe Biden ended some of his predecessor’s hardline immigration policies. The Biden administration decided against quickly expelling unaccompanied minors from the country as the Trump administration had done for eight months.

Children are initially taken to border facilities that aren’t equipped to house them for long periods of time. From there, they are being sent to these shelters while case workers assess which relatives are suitable to take them.

The minors will then go through immigration court proceedings to see whether they are eligible to stay in the U.S. or must return to their home countries.

The site in Long Beach is being operated by DRC, a disaster management company, and expected to mostly house girls, said Bonnie Preston, acting regional director for Health and Human Services

. She said she could not immediately say how much it would cost to operate the site.

“We’re really in an emergency situation,” she said. “The budgets are, you know, rolling out as we see what the need is, and the budget will meet the need to keep the children safe.”

Lindsay Toczylowski​​, executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said she was pleased the shelter had already been equipped with workspace for attorneys to come in and meet with children to explain how the U.S. immigration system works and discuss their legal cases. She said it was clear efforts were taken to make the large site feel comfortable for children, but hopefully they will only be there a very short time.

“This will be a safe place for kids to be, but it should be temporary,” she said.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post California shelter opens to immigrant children from border appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.