Twenty-three people were rescued Monday from a boat allegedly smuggling migrants off the coast of San Diego, not far from where another boat wrecked a few weeks ago, leaving three people dead, authorities said.
The small vessel, known as a panga, was seen shortly after 3 a.m. by the U.S. Border Patrol video system as it navigated near rocks off the coast of Point Loma. The Coast Guard went to the scene, but the boat did not comply with the order to stop, authorities said.
The ship ran aground on the beach. Lifeguards and San Diego harbor police were called in and the Coast Guard pulled the boat out of the water and lowered the people, authorities added.
20 men and three women, all Mexican or Guatemalan, were determined to be in the United States without authorization, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
The area is north of where a boat suspected of smuggling migrants crashed into rocks near Cabrillo National Park on May 2. Three people died and more than twenty were injured.
Over the years, human trafficking off the California coast has declined and risen, but it has long been a dangerous alternative for migrants to avoid heavily guarded land borders. Ships come in from Mexico at midnight, sometimes sailing hundreds of kilometers (miles) north.
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