Dramatic moment migrants in speedboat nearly run over surfers in California waters as they race for land, avoiding US border security

A dozen illegal immigrants brazenly arrived in the United States by taking a speedboat to a California beach, nearly hitting people in the water and then fleeing in cars.

The boat missed what appeared to be a surfer in the water by a few meters as it zipped by and approached the beach at very high speed.

After stranding the vessel on the sand, the migrants disembarked and sprinted towards the row of houses by the sea on Saturday.

Another video showed them being picked up by waiting black SUVs in Carlsbad, a beach town about 30 miles north of San Diego.

The cars left in such a hurry that a woman almost fell out when it started moving before she had even gotten into the back seats.

Locals filming the migrants claimed the police were called but did not turn up.

The footage is the latest in a brazen attempt by migrants to cross the border illegally. While most try to sneak from Mexico to the United States across the border, others, like the sailors, are trying new methods.

Illegal immigrants like those on the boat are not counted in the 6,997 asylum seekers who surrendered to the San Diego Border Patrol in the first week of April.

Migrants can seek asylum in the United States by crossing the border and immediately presenting themselves to law enforcement.

However, a smaller number sneak into the country illegally with no intention of following the asylum process.

The nearly 7,000 migrants from 70 countries were more than other sectors normally receive in a whole month.

The San Diego sector, which includes most of Southern California’s border with Mexico except for El Centro and Calexico, received 6,000 to 8,000 immigrants in recent weeks.

What makes the numbers from 3.-9. What makes April so significant is that they were the highest in the country, even beating the top-ranked Tucson sector.

The Arizona sector had only 6,600 migrants, but regularly has as many as 11,000.

The Border Patrol divides the border into ‘sectors’ or regions, with San Diego the third busiest in recent figures, but that could change.

“Tucson has been number one for migrant arrivals since July 2023, but the number has declined,” said Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America.

“While one week’s data isn’t enough evidence to go by, it’s possible that San Diego could replace Tucson as the number one sector.”

With so many migrants entering the country through Southern California, migrants screened by the US Border Patrol are being released onto the streets.

The county’s migrant shelter closed a few months ago after local leaders decided they didn’t want to spend the $18 million a year needed to keep running it.

“It was costing us at the time about $1.5 million a month to be their travel agency,” San Diego County Commissioner Jim Desmond said.

Without the local shelter, migrants are either turned loose at a transit station or at the airport by Border Patrol.

“The biggest burden here lately has been our airport. Fortunately, many of them fly to other parts of the country, but we are a tourist community. People who come to San Diego see all the people who sleep there. It looks bad, the commissioner added.

‘We just can’t sustain it; we can’t handle the numbers coming here.’

Migrants have been known to spend as many as five days crashing at the airport while waiting for a flight out of the city, Desmond added.

The weekly figures do not include migrants who entered the United States legally with CBP One Appointments at the San Ysidro Port of Entry between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego.

At least 77,000 migrants have entered Southern California that way from October to February, federal statistics show.

Latest figures from Customs and Border Protection showed that the agency encountered 189,922 at the southern border in February.

This financial year alone, the agency has encountered more than 1.1 million people at the border – which began for the government last October.

That record high numbers of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border have migrated a top concern in this US presidential election year.

“Our immigration system… is fundamentally broken, including our asylum system that so significantly affects the security of our borders and the processes we administer at it,” Immigration Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week.

“Only Congress can fix our broken and outdated system, and only Congress can address our need for more Border Patrol agents, asylum officers and immigration judges.”

The United States is expected to contend with more than 8 million asylum seekers and migrants who will have crossed the southern border by September.

The staggering number represents a 167 percent increase in five years and underscores the challenges facing an immigration system that is both underfunded and outdated.

The vast majority of those 8 million are now free to roam US streets, including 2 million ‘high priority’ cases of career criminals seeking asylum.

The United States is expected to contend with more than 8 million asylum seekers and migrants who will have crossed the southern border by September.

The staggering number represents a 167 percent increase in five years and underscores the challenges facing an immigration system that is both underfunded and outdated.

Migrants crossing the border can often be forced to wait several years for a decision to be made on their applications. Meanwhile, they have been released onto American streets.

Recent data suggest the backlog has only grown during President Joe Biden’s tenure, reflecting in part the difficulties his administration has faced in dealing with the unprecedented influx of migrants, mainly from Central and South America.

By the end of fiscal year 2023 on Sept. 30, more than 6 million people were registered on what officials term the “non-withheld document.”

Government projections, as communicated in Homeland Security documents sent to Congress, suggest that number will have risen to 8 million by October 1.

The vast majority of those 8 million are now free to roam US streets, including 2 million ‘high priority’ cases of career criminals seeking asylum.