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At least 16 people who were seen floating in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico’s Baja California coast were rescued in the early hours of Friday and authorities are searching for several others, a US Coast Guard official said.
The Coast Guard responded to a report of a vessel in distress around 1 a.m. local time, authorities said. The area is frequented by smugglers who transport migrants to the United States by boat, and several boats have capsized in fatal accidents over the years.
The people were found floating in the water about 225 kilometers west of Ensenada, Petty Officer Chris Sappey said.
“There was no ship to be seen in the water, just straight people in the water,” he said.
US Coast Guard personnel work on a helicopter at Coast Guard Station San Diego on Friday.(Denis Poroy/Associated Press)
One rescued person said as many as 27 people had been aboard a boat, Sappey said. It was unclear how the people got into the water, and Sappey had no further details about what they were doing.
Those rescued were taken to hospitals in San Diego, Sappey said.
The U.S. Coast Guard is assisting Mexican authorities in the search efforts with a helicopter, a fixed-wing aircraft 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 Mexico in the dead of night and sometimes travel hundreds of kilometers north.
There have been several incidents in recent years of migrant boats capsizing en route to California.
In May 2025, at least three people died when a panga ran aground off the coast, about 56 kilometers north of the US-Mexico border. In 2023, eight people died 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 US coast.
A federal judge has sentenced a San Diego man to 18 years in prison in 2022 for piloting a small vessel loaded with 32 migrants that broke apart in powerful surf off the coast, killing three people and injuring more than two dozen.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has urged residents along the country’s Pacific coast to stay indoors as powerful Category 4 Hurricane Simon approaches, threatening devastating winds and storm surge.
