Boat Full of Illegal Immigrants Capsizes Off San Diego Beach

Environmental crews walk past a lifeguard tower in Huntington Beach, Calif., on Oct. 5, 2021. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

A boat filled with smuggled illegal immigrants capsized near a San Diego beach in the early morning of Jan. 25, flinging about 20 people into the sea as lifeguards and surfers rushed to rescue them, city officials said.

“Lifeguards immediately responded to the scene by water and on the beach,” city spokesman José Ysea told The Epoch Times in an email Monday.

Firefighter crews responded to the scene at about 7:40 a.m. Saturday and helped with the rescue, according to the city.

Two people were inside the cabin of the boat when it beached itself on the sand, and rescuers extricated both people. One person was unresponsive, and first responders initiated CPR, according to Ysea. No further information was available.

This was the second smuggling vessel recovered Saturday morning on Ocean Beach, located about 20 miles from the U.S. border with Mexico, according to the city.

The first boat was found at about 6 a.m. in the Scripps Pier area Saturday.

“The boat had been abandoned, with nobody in or near the vessel,” Ysea said.

A video captured by a local photojournalist captured the moment when one of the boats—a white and blue vessel—overturned in the surf south of a rock jetty at Ocean Beach.

Lifeguard crews were also performing life-saving measures on a person in the video.

Photojournalist Eddy Baier, whose video spread quickly on social media Saturday, told local news station KGTV that surfers were swimming out to the boat and pulling the illegal immigrants onto their boards to swim them to shore.

Baier also described how people at the beach were bringing blankets to the illegal immigrants who appeared terrified.

“With all the stuff that’s going on down at the border ... this just shows that there is human compassion out there for when these people do get in trouble like this,” Baier said Saturday. “A lot of them were cold and shivering. They were scared.”

Baier did not return a request for comment from The Epoch Times about the video Monday.

Eight people were taken to area hospitals, according to the city.

Multiple San Diego Police Department units responded to the scene. No federal officials were at the site, according to Ysea.

Boats carrying illegal immigrants have appeared numerous times on the San Diego coastline in the past few years.

In January 2024, a boat carrying more than 20 immigrants was caught on video arriving at a beach in the early-morning hours. The occupants were seen vanishing into the streets of La Jolla.

When U.S. Border Patrol agents responded, they found two boats at the site.

The latest attempts to smuggle illegal immigrants into the country comes as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration announced the start of enforcement operations across the country Jan. 24 targeting “known criminal aliens who threaten national security or public safety.”