AS MEXICO BORDER TIGHTENS, SMUGGLERS TAKE TO SEA

SAN DIEGO -- They move north in rickety fishing boats, often
overloaded and barely seaworthy, slipping through the darkness and
hidden from the watchful radar of American patrols.

Along beaches north of here, the migrants from Mexico and beyond
scramble ashore, in groups of a dozen or two, and dash past stunned
beachgoers, sometimes even leaving behind their boats, known as
pangas. Drug smugglers, too, take this sea route, including one last
month found paddling a surfboard north with a duffel bag full of
marijuana on it.

As the land border with Mexico tightens with new fencing and
technology, the authorities are seeing a sharp spike in the number of
people and drugs being moved into the United States by sea off the San
Diego coast.

Law enforcement authorities in the United States said the shift
demonstrated the resolve of smugglers to exploit the vastness of the
sea, the difficulty in monitoring it, and the desperation of migrants
willing to risk crossing it.

"It's like spillover from a dam," said Cmdr. Guy Pearce, who oversees
the antismuggling effort for the Coast Guard in San Diego.

For generations, people have tried to swim, surf and ride boats,
sometimes carrying contraband, into the United States from south of
the border.

But Commander Pearce and other officials in the Department of Homeland
Security say those sporadic efforts have accelerated to unprecedented
levels recently -- a doubling in the number of illegal immigrants --
more than 300 in the last two years -- caught on boats or beaches and
a sevenfold increase in maritime drug seizures, principally several
thousand pounds of marijuana.

The authorities have taken note that the increase coincides with the
near completion of new, more fortified border fencing along a 14-mile
stretch from the ocean inland.

New smuggling rings have also emerged, operating out of beach towns
south of the border and islands off the Mexican coast, convincing
migrants that the passage is safe and the ocean too wide open for
maritime law enforcement to catch them.

A recent patrol with the Coast Guard showed they may have a
point.

All night and into the morning, the Coast Guard cutter Petrel dashed
across the seas looking for suspect boats. A tip that a suspect boat
was due to pass miles off the coast around 1 a.m. sent the cutter,
nearly all of its lights off to avoid detection, searching by the
faint glow of a half moon. The boat was not found.

Later, just after 4 a.m., a radar sweep picked up two boats moving
quickly south, prompting the crew to cut off the classical music
wafting from overhead speakers on a bridge lighted only by navigation
monitors.

As the roaring engines sent the cutter crashing over swells for more
than 20 minutes after the boats were first noticed, the crew could see
the boats speeding without their lights on.

A boarding team mobilized with body armor and rifles and raced in a
small craft from the cutter to check out the boats. Just early-morning
fishing, said the people on the boats, who insisted they did not
realize their lights were off. With no evidence of contraband, they
were let go.

But Chief Petty Officer Gary Auslam, in charge on this watch, had his
doubts as he watched the boats quickly motor on. Gunrunners bringing
weapons from the United States move swiftly.

"Boy, they got out of here pretty quick, didn't they?" Chief Auslam
said, gazing out the bridge.

It falls mainly to the Coast Guard and the Customs and Border
Protection division of the Department of Homeland Security to patrol
the seas with a mix of cutters, aircraft and a few small high-speed
boats.

The authorities arrested 136 illegal immigrants sneaking in by sea in
the fiscal year that ended Oct. 30, double the 66 marine arrests in
2007. Since October, more than 100 illegal immigrants have been
arrested, bringing the marine arrests of illegal immigrants in the
past couple of years to unprecedented levels, said Michael Carney, the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in San Diego who oversees a
task force on marine smuggling.

The seizure of drugs, principally marijuana, has similarly
skyrocketed. In the fiscal year that ended in October, the authorities
seized 6,300 pounds of marijuana in the coastal waters north of the
border, a sevenfold increase from the 906 pounds confiscated in 2007.
This fiscal year, 6,100 pounds have been found.

"This is somewhat of an alarming trend," Mr. Carney said. "It has
opened our eyes. There is still a lot we need to learn about how these
organizations operate."

The Department of Homeland Security is responding to this surge with
orders for more boats and equipment.

Generally, the flow of migrants north has slowed as the economy here
has withered and the United States has bolstered patrols and fencing.
But people still make the journey and the desire for drugs keeps
smugglers busy.

Victor Clark Alfaro, director of the Binational Center for Human
Rights in Tijuana, Mexico, who has studied smuggling, said he doubted
the fence was causing the spike. Instead, Mr. Clark Alfaro said, "a
new generation" of smugglers have simply had success ferrying people
over the seas and are encouraging migrants to go their way. The charge
is more than $4,000, roughly double what a smuggling guide would
charge to lead somebody over land, he said. Marijuana smugglers,
likewise, have gotten wise to the sea route.

"It's always," Mr. Clark Alfaro said, "a fight between technology and
the ingenuity of smugglers."

Coast Guard officials said they knew of no boats that had sunk but
they worry about that prospect. In March they seized a 25-foot boat
with 22 people aboard.

The biggest adversary at times, though, is the darkness.

Petty Officer First Class Pablo Mendoza picked up night-vision
binoculars and scanned the horizon. When it was suggested that the
equipment might offer an advantage, Petty Officer Mendoza replied,
"Yeah, the problem is they have these, too."

Crew members said they did not believe the guard or Customs and Border
Protection had enough fast boats to get to suspected smuggling boats
in time, though the agencies, as well as the Navy and civilian law
enforcement, are making an effort to coordinate their patrols.

In the end, said Petty Officer First Class Jason Tessier, another
supervisor on the Petrel, "it is a matter of being in the right place
at the right time."