Dad in coma, son dead and 10-year-old daughter missing after migrant boat capsizes; 5 charged
Tragic new details about the deadly smuggling incident came to light Tuesday.
The body of a 14-year-old boy from India was among three recovered following the accident, and his 10-year-old sister remains missing at sea and is presumed dead, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The siblings' parents were rescued, but the father is now in a coma, and the mother remains hospitalized.
'The drowning deaths of these children are a heartbreaking reminder of how little human traffickers care about the costs of their deadly business,' U.S. Atty. Adam Gordon said in a statement. 'We are committed to seeking justice for these vulnerable victims, and to holding accountable any traffickers responsible for their deaths.'
The U.S. Coast Guard received a call around 6:30 a.m. Tuesday reporting that a small panga-style boat with an estimated 16 people on board had overturned just north of Torrey Pines State Beach, said Hunter Schnabel, a Coast Guard public affairs officer.
Bystanders and San Diego lifeguards were able to rescue four people. Three bodies were recovered from the scene, and nine people were initially unaccounted for.
Two of the smuggling suspects — Jesus Ivan Rodriguez-Leyva, 36, and Julio Cesar Zuniga-Luna, 30, both of Mexico — were arrested on the beach, prosecutors said.
They have been charged with bringing in migrants resulting in death, which has a maximum penalty of death or life in prison. Although the death penalty remains legal in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a moratorium on executions, in effect halting them during his tenure.
They are also charged with bringing in migrants for financial gain, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Three additional arrests were made Monday night after Border Patrol agents spotted a car, which had been seen earlier near the accident scene, some 25 miles south in Chula Vista, which is just 10 miles north of the Mexican border. The driver of the vehicle fled the scene.
Agents continued their investigation and successfully stopped two other vehicles involved in the smuggling incident, authorities said. Inside the vehicles, they discovered eight of the nine missing migrants, with the exception of the 10-year-old girl, prosecutors said.
The drivers of the vehicles — Melissa Jenelle Cota, 33, Gustavo Lara, 32, and Sergio Rojas-Fregoso, 31 — were arrested and charged with the transportation of undocumented immigrants, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Rojas-Fregoso faced an additional charge for being in the country illegally after having been previously deported in December 2023, prosecutors said. This charge is punishable by up to two years in prison.
'Human smuggling, regardless of the route, is not only illegal but extremely dangerous. Smugglers often treat people as disposable commodities,' Shawn Gibson, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, San Diego, said in a statement. 'Yesterday's heartbreaking events are a stark reminder of the urgent need to dismantle these criminal networks driven by greed.'
The smuggling of migrants is a persistent problem along the California coastline and one that often has deadly consequences.
In 2023, at least eight people died when two migrant smuggling boats overturned off Black's Beach in San Diego County. A year earlier, a man and two women died when a panga boat crashed into rocks at the base of the cliffs of Point Loma in San Diego.
Times staff writer Hannah Fry contributed to this report
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Chicago Tribune
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Suspect in ‘ICE rules' vandalism in Little Village in custody, police say
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Miami Herald
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'A core component of their messaging is that this is about public safety, that the people that they are arresting are threats to their communities,' said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank. 'But it's hard to maintain that this is all about public safety when you're going out and arresting people who are just going about their lives and working.' Trump never said he would arrest only criminals. Almost as soon as he retook office on Jan. 20, Trump signed a stack of executive orders aimed at drastically curbing immigration. The administration then moved to expand arrests from immigrants who posed a security threat to anyone who entered the country illegally. Yet while officials kept insisting they were focused on violent criminals, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a warning: 'That doesn't mean that the other illegal criminals who entered our nation's borders are off the table.' 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Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
U.S. Coast Guard Capsizes Boat, Detains Canadian Who Insists He Was In Canadian Waters
A fisherman detained by U.S. federal agents insisted he was fishing in Canadian waters on Lake Champlain, but the U.S. Coast Guard claimed that he crossed into U.S. waters. In a totally proportional response, the Coast Guard capsized his borrowed boat and detained him in soaking wet clothes for almost two hours, reports CTV News. Lake Champlain straddles the borders of New York, Vermont, and Quebec. Edouard Lallemand believed he was fishing near Venise-en-Québec, at the northern tip of the lake in Canadian waters. A U.S. Coast Guard boat stopped him, and the officers on board insisted that he had illegally crossed the border into American waters. Lallemand said he's been fishing Lake Champlain for decades and knew he was in Canadian waters and at least 10 miles from the border, he told WCAX. Lallemand told CTV News he was polite enough in speaking to them, but insisted that they could not cross the border and arrest him. At this point, Lallemand started the engine, told the Coast Guard he would rather speak to them by the shore, and moved that way. The Coast Guard boat pursued him and tried to push him into U.S. waters, capsizing the boat and sending him into the water in the process. Lallemand said he almost drown in the altercation. The Coast Guard then pulled him out, handcuffed him, and turned him over to Customs and Border Protection, who jailed him for almost two hours in wet clothes and a dirty blanket. Read more: Nobody Does Land Yachts Like Cadillac, And These Are Five Of The Best Ones What Really Happened? According to the Coast Guard's statement to CTV News, Lallemand was "in U.S. Customs waters" at the time he was detained. The Coast Guard says he ignored orders to stop for boarding purposes, then suddenly turned and rammed the 29-foot RB-S II with his small fishing boat, causing it to capsize. This occurred at coordinates 65 yards south of the U.S. border, claims the Coast Guard. Google Maps confirms that the Coast Guard's claimed coordinates are 65 yards south of the border, which totally justifies the use of excessive force, I guess. It also confirms that the border is three miles south of the southern tip of the Venise-en-Québec peninsula. It's not like there is a marked line across the middle of the lake, but that still leaves Canadians a large area to enjoy without U.S. Coast Guard interference. Who are you going to believe, the man who has been fishing these waters for decades and knows them like the back of his hand? Or a government known for gross overreach, excessively aggressive border defense, detaining and rejecting a tourist because of a meme on his phone, and disappearing a man who crossed the border by accident? And which seems more likely; a man trying to retreat to the shore's relative safety when faced with oppressors from a foreign government, or the Coast Guard's claim that he deliberately rammed them with his small borrowed boat? It's hard to know for sure. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
