On Wednesday morning at about 6:45 a.m. a small boat full of illegal immigrants, reportedly traveling from Tijuana, was discovered landing on the beach west of the NRG power plant in El Segundo.
Witnesses reported numerous individuals running from the “panga” style boat in all directions, according to the El Segundo Police Department. Police from El Segundo and Manhattan Beach responded along with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Los Angeles County Lifeguard and the U.S. Coast Guard to contain the area. Twenty individuals were detained, which included fifteen men, four women and one 14-year-old child.
“When we contacted them, they were all wet, scared and hungry,” said El Segundo Lieutenant Raymond Garcia, adding that they were later fed. Garcia said the individuals didn’t seem to know each other. “They were very cooperative, very respectful.”
Just before 10 a.m., investigators unloaded more than 20 large containers of fuel from the boat, along with pieces of clothing and shoes. “(That boat) is not meant to cross a large body of water,” Garcia said, adding that the small boats are sometimes used for fishing off the coast. “They’re certainly not meant to travel 100, 150 miles on open ocean. That’s probably why they had lots of gas cans to get them where they ended up.”
Gardena resident Adams Mehki was about to go surfing when he noticed the boat just before 7 a.m. “They came in at the worst possible spot,” he said. “You’ve got the refinery right here, so they can’t go inland anywhere, so they were, for a half-mile either way, funneled along the beach before they could get to where they could disperse.”
According to police, the boat appeared to have been launched from an unknown location in Tijuana, Mexico – about 150 miles from El Segundo – on March 20. All occupants were attempting to enter the country illegally, police said. “The motive was to enter the country and seek a better life,” Garcia said.
“Everybody is in custody – only bodies, no drugs, no nothing,” a Sheriff’s Department spokesperson said.
Written in black marker on the boat were the words “Ensenada” and “La Gordita.”
The immigrants were held briefly at the El Segundo police station and then turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They are likely to face deportation, police said.
In his 20 years at the department, Garcia has never seen an incident like this in El Segundo. “The beach is secluded, maybe that’s why they picked this beach,” Garcia said. “It’s not very populated, other than people using the bike path to get to and from El Segundo and Manhattan Beach, so maybe they thought it was an isolated enough area that they can come in undetected.”
