US Federal Authorities are continuing to hit cartel human smuggling routes on the seas and along the Rio Grande River border between Texas & Mexico.
At Sea:
The latest reported cartel human smuggling bust at sea happened last Saturday morning, 19 miles west of Black’s Beach, California, when the US Coast Guard stopped a “fishing boat,” traveling at a high rate of speed, and found it was occupied by nine Mexicans who were taken into custody.
Four days earlier, one mile off Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) officers intercepted a boat transporting twelve illegal aliens from Uzbekistan and Russia.
Other recent apprehensions of illegal aliens at sea include the arrests of fifteen illegal aliens by the US Coast Guard 24 miles southwest of San Clemente Island, eight illegal aliens off the coast of San Diego, and fifteen illegal aliens attempting to enter the US illegally off San Diego that were intercepted in a “panga-style boat” in a joint operation by the US Coast Guard and the CBP.
In 2025, the Coast Guard intercepted or transported 11,000 illegal aliens for deportation while working to secure 31,000 US miles of maritime borders, and in 2026, the pace of their enforcement efforts is showing no signs of slowing down.
Buoy Battles:
US authorities are also employing buoys in their battles against the cartels in US waterways.
The Border Patrol (as part of US Customs & Border Protection), as well as the US Coast Guard, are both employing buoys to deter cartel human smugglers from transporting illegal aliens into the United States.
The Coast Guard is testing surveillance buoys manufactured by Ocean Power Technologies off San Diego to alert them to illegal crossing attempts from Mexico to California, like those we have reported earlier in this article, while the Border Patrol is dropping more “floating border walls” of buoys into the Rio Grande to prevent illegal crossings from Mexico into Texas.
On the Rio Grande:
Meanwhile, on the 1,250-mile Rio Grande border between Mexico & Texas, the US Army has joined a growing fleet of boats patrolling the river. The US military’s Northern Command has assigned crews piloting Army M-30 boats to support a growing number of federal authorities (including the Army, Coast Guard & Customs & Border Protection) to the Joint Task Force-Southern Border, who are serving alongside Texas Military Forces assigned to “Operation Lone Star” to continue to tighten US Southern Border Security.
US Coast Guard Patrol boats have been assigned to 260 miles of the southern stretches of the Rio Grande as part of “Operation River Wall.”
The State of Texas also has assigned armed boats to the Rio Grande through “Operation Lone Star” and provided patrol boats to local authorities such as the Terrell County Sheriff’s Department which has seen an increase of camouflaged aliens and cartel human smuggling “guides” crossing along remote stretches of the river there, as crossing points downriver are sealed.
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Abrazos,
Jack Beavers
The coordination between Coast Guard buoy surveillance and Border Patrol river ops is the kind of layered interdiction that actually shifts smuggling economics. Watching cartels adapt by pushing to remote Rio Grande stretches proves enforcement isnt futile but forces them into more expensive and risky routes. My cousin worked search-and-rescue in the Mediterranean and saw similar patterns with migration routes shifitng constantly.
Nice work. It’s amazing how things work well when the government is for the country and not against it.