Smaller speedier boats run back in from the north jetty as a larger sport fisherman nears his turning point to head out the inlet and offshore, Thursday April 10, 2025, at Ponce Inlet.
San Diego, California – The Coast Guard announced Thursday that one of its cutters intercepted a small boat carrying 13 people just off the coast of San Diego.
At about 5:45 in the morning, the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Forrest Rednour spotted and stopped a 25-foot cuddy cabin roughly 23 miles west of Point Loma. A boarding team discovered ten adults and three minors onboard. According to officials, all three children were traveling with their mother.
The group told authorities they were from Guatemala and Mexico—one person claiming Guatemalan nationality and the other twelve identifying as Mexican nationals. Coast Guard officials confiscated the boat, detained the passengers, and later turned them over to another Department of Homeland Security agency for processing.
The Forrest Rednour, one of the Coast Guard’s fast response cutters, is based in Los Angeles but routinely patrols the busy waters off Southern California. These interdictions, while rarely making headlines, have become part of the regular rhythm of the agency’s work in the region. The stretch of ocean between Baja California and San Diego is a well-worn corridor for smugglers who move people and narcotics north, often in small, overloaded vessels.
The Thursday stop came as San Diego remains one of the busiest border sectors in the country for both land and maritime smuggling. The city’s proximity to Mexico, combined with the vast expanse of open water off Point Loma, makes the area a natural gateway. Authorities say the arrests and vessel seizures are part of a larger push to deter these crossings and disrupt the criminal networks that organize them.
No further details about the individuals detained—such as their identities, intended destinations, or the conditions aboard the vessel—were immediately released. What is clear is that, once again, the Pacific waters just outside San Diego served as the stage for a familiar story: a small boat, a predawn interception, and a reminder of how the border extends well beyond the fence lines on land.
