"Multiple people are dead after a boat carrying dozens of migrants capsized and broke up off the coast of San Diego Sunday," NPR reports. "Maritime smuggling efforts like this one have been increasing since the border wall in this area was reinforced and increased in size under the Trump administration."
I guess the drowned migrants did not make it into America, which means in some sense that the wall is "working," but the ocean-going immigrants who don't drown or get caught are harder to quantify. Short of extending the wall far across the Pacific—difficult for practical and environmental reasons, since you can hardly even get an offshore oil rig approved these days along the California Coast—this seems like a case of unintended consequences. A wall intended to keep illegal immigrants out winds up diverting the flow to "maritime smuggling efforts."
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported in March:
- A Cuban migrant drowned Tuesday trying to swim around the border wall in the Pacific Ocean from Playas de Tijuana to Imperial Beach, according to Tijuana police and Hugo Castro, a migrant activist who was among those who tried to perform CPR to save the man.
- A 28-year-old Honduran woman drowned near the same spot on March 13, according to Tijuana police and the Spanish-language newspaper Milenio.