EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The captain and first mate of a Mexican fishing vessel are in federal custody after slugging it out at sea with members of the U.S. Coast Guard trying to board their boat.
The fracas unfolded last Sunday north of Mission Bay in San Diego, when members of a federal Joint Operations Center in Imperial Beach received information about a suspicious vessel.
The boat had an “excessive number” of fishing poles deployed and only six occupants including the captain and the first mate. Federal court documents show U.S. Border Patrol agents deployed to an area known as the Dana Launch and watched several people get off the boat.
The agents approached four passengers who turned out to be migrants from Mexico. Court documents show the agents told the four to sit down on the pier while they looked for the boat operators.
The agents spotted two individuals trying to hide near public restrooms and began yelling for them to come out. Court documents show the two individuals sprinted back to the boat and got it out of its moorings before the agents could apprehend them.
Staff at the Joint Operations Center remotely tracked the motorboat and dispatched a U.S. Coast Guard vessel to intercept.
About 20 minutes later, the Coast Guard caught up to the boat, activated emergency lights and directed the occupants through loudspeakers to stop.
The Mexican boat not only failed to stop but rammed into the Coast Guard vessel. When the Coast Guard maneuvered to cut off the boat, its two remaining occupants “began throwing metal objects” at members of the Coast Guard on deck, documents show.
The sailors responded with machinegun fire that disabled the Mexican boat’s engines and by firing pepper ball projectiles at the occupants.
Coast Guard members boarded the boat and still “found the occupants non-compliant,” so they used pepper spray on them before placing them in handcuffs. Court documents show Oscar Eduardo Audelo Rodriguez and Francisco Brado Cota were taken to Naval Base Point Loma for medical evaluation and discharged the same day.
Audelo and Brado declined to make a statement regarding the migrants allegedly getting off their boat nor why they ran from Border Patrol or resisted the Coast Guard.
An arrest affidavit filed last Monday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California alleges three of the four migrants identified Audelo as the captain of the boat and Brado as the co-captain or first mate. They stated they paid between $7,000 and $16,000 to be smuggled from Mexico into the United States.
Audelo and Brado remain in custody on charges of bringing illegal aliens into the United States for profit. They face a detention hearing next week.