US Coast Guard rescues at least 16 and is searching for more in the water off Mexico’s Baja Coast

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One person rescued said as many as 27 people had been on board a boat, Sappey said. It was unclear how the people ended up in the water, and Sappey had no further details on what they were doing.

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Those rescued were being taken to hospitals in San Diego, Sappey said.

The Coast Guard was assisting Mexican authorities in the search efforts with a helicopter, fixed-wing plane and a cutter, Sappey said.

Migrants are increasingly turning to the risky alternative offered by smugglers to travel by sea to avoid heavily guarded land borders. Small boats called pangas leave Baja in the dead of night and sometimes travel hundreds of miles (kilometers) north.

There have been several incidents in recent years of migrant vessels capsizing en route to California.

In May of 2025, at least three people died when a panga flipped off the coast about 35 miles (56 km) north of the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2023, eight people were killed when two migrant smuggling boats approached a San Diego beach in heavy fog and one of them capsized in the surf. It was one of the deadliest maritime smuggling incidents in waters off the U.S. coast.

A federal judge sentenced a San Diego man to 18 years in prison in 2022 for piloting a small vessel overloaded with 32 migrants that smashed apart in powerful surf off the coast, killing three people and injuring more than two dozen.

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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

Julie Watson And Matthew Brown, The Associated Press