Known as M.E.As, the agents who fly in them can be in the vent for multiple hours along the Baja California coastline in international airspace, which is anything beyond 12 miles from the coast .
Crews much have to fly hundreds of miles to the west as smugglers try to outflank breeze patrols by staying away from the coastline .
“ We fly over the kingdom or over the ocean to detect boats using the radar and the camera. We can be high, low, medium, it depends on the upwind and it depends on what we ’ re looking for, ” said Detection Officer Ned Leonard.
This is a Multiple Enforcement Aircraft used by Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Branch. (Courtesy: CBP) Leonard sits in the back of an MEA focused on monitors that relay what the plane ’ s camera is capturing down below .
He besides operates other sophisticate equipment such as radar and engineering that is deemed classified .
Leonard can see anomalies on the urine and promptly zoom in to determine whether it might be a fish gravy boat or person trying to smuggle humans and/or drugs into the U.S .
Ned Leonard is a Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Detection Officer. (Salvador Rivera/Border Report) “ Sometimes the trust employment people who are experienced captains of a boat, they know entire well how to fish, and sometimes they do fish or they do both things at once, they can smuggle and fish, ” said Leonard .
recently, withe more and more nautical smuggle events, Leonard and his crewmates have been interfering .
“ It has been busy, a distribute of boats coming up with people, we have drugs arsenic well, ” said Leonard. “ We can pick them up very far south, this is a beneficial radar, we can see far out so it ’ randomness more than barely eyes out the window it ’ s a long-range signal detection capability. ”
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Leonard pointed out they look out for boats transiting across the U.S. border or into U.S. waters that aren ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate supposed to be there .
One route employed by smugglers is to load up their boats with drugs and launch them from the Gulf of California, sweeping around the tip of the Baja Peninsula and navigating north toward Central California. (KSWB) Border Report has learned cartels are immediately loading up boats with drugs and launching them from deeply in the Gulf of California before navigating around the tip of the Baja Peninsula and heading north, hoping to land somewhere in Central California, a travel that can take days .
CBP’s Air and Marine crew piloting Multiple Enforcement Aircraft off the coast of San Diego. (Salvador Rivera/Border Report) “ The bad guys aren ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate fools, they watch the places where they end up getting caught and adjacent meter they ’ ll try something different and we try something different, and it keeps going this way where they modify their tactics and we modify ours, ” said Leonard. “ right nowadays it sometimes means we go out reasonably far, they used to come into San Diego Point Loma area, now they may come into Malibu, Santa Barbara over even farther north. ”
Leonard said being separate of the interdictions is very rewarding for all the agents involved .
“ You feel like you ’ re doing something for your nation and possibly save some people excessively from the hazards of the smuggling business so it ’ sulfur identical hearty, and possibly keep some drugs off the streets, out of the schools, that ’ s what motivates everybody here. ”
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Leonard added that sometimes he can ’ metric ton but feel for the people on control panel the boats .
“ A batch of times they ’ re out there the like distance we ’ re going in an aircraft but they ’ ra going in a boat, which can take days, so they ’ re out there days away from home trusting the person that ’ south smuggling them to get them safely somewhere like Malibu. sometimes they have no food or water on board, they have no lights normally, so imagine being out at ocean with no lights for a few nights and possibly
you don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate know how to swim so it ’ south very dangerous, you constantly think of the people. In fact, we ’ ve had a copulate of search and rescue events recently where we had to guide the Coast Guard to get person in the water where they were swimming. ”
