President Donald Trump’s initial efforts to curb illegal immigration and smuggling through the southern border are getting all the publicity, but a lesser-discussed aspect of their broader effort is through the maritime routes along the coasts.
The president signed a slew of executive orders focusing on securing the border, namely declaring a state of emergency, while the military deployed thousands of troops to assist Customs and Border Protection in carrying out those orders.
The Coast Guard and a special branch of CBP known as Air and Marine Operations are responsible for patrolling the waterways off the U.S. coasts to prevent the smuggling of people and illegal substances.
While the Texas-Mexico border is most thought of when it comes to illegal immigration with the concept, the waterways along the U.S. coastlines are a much more expansive area to surveil.
In the early hours of the Trump administration, then-acting Secretary of Homeland Security Benjamine Huffman relieved the Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Linda Fagan, from her position. She was replaced by Adm. Kevin Lunday, who had been serving as the vice commandant, in an acting capacity.
A senior Department of Homeland Security official told the Washington Examiner that one of the reasons Fagan was relieved of duty was due to “insufficient coordination with the Department of Homeland Security to prioritize operations along maritime borders.”
Lunday surged assets to aid in the mission of deterring illegal immigration and smuggling and said, “We will detect, deter, and interdict illegal migration, drug smuggling, and other terrorist or hostile activity before it reaches our border.”
“The U.S. Coast Guard is the world’s premier maritime law enforcement agency, vital to protecting America’s maritime borders, territorial integrity, and sovereignty,” he added. “Per the president’s executive orders, I have directed my operational commanders to immediately surge assets — cutters, aircraft, boats, and deployable specialized forces — to increase Coast Guard presence.”
Lunday specified that they would focus on Florida’s coasts, Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, and the maritime borders between the Bahamas and south Florida, the United States and Mexico in the Pacific, and along the Gulf of Mexico, which Trump has pushed to be renamed the Gulf of America.
Since Trump’s inauguration, the Coast Guard has publicly announced four different interdictions of vessels seemingly carrying migrants hoping to illegally enter the U.S.
Last weekend, the Coast Guard intercepted a vessel with 16 people of Mexican nationality aboard roughly 15 miles off the coast of Mission Bay, near San Diego. They also interdicted a panga with 14 people who claimed Mexican nationality approximately 20 miles off the coast of Point Loma, California, on Jan. 29, and the Coast Guard stopped another vessel with 21 people on board the day before in the same area.
Coast Guard officials said they interdicted a different vessel carrying 26 people 1 mile offshore from Oceanside Harbor on Jan. 21, the day after Trump’s inauguration. The people on that ship identified as being of Mexican, Chinese, and Vietnamese nationalities.
The Coast Guard’s Homeland Security Task Force – Southeast interdicted nearly 12,000 migrants in fiscal 2023, the majority of whom were Cuban or Haitian. The American Maritime Officers said members seized 233,662 pounds of illegal drugs in fiscal 2024, which was lower than the 304,435 pounds of drugs that were seized the year before, according to CBP data.
The vastness of the waterways near the U.S. borders has prompted the military to pursue autonomous sea-based vehicles.
“Southern Spear will operationalize a heterogeneous mix of robotic and autonomous systems to support the detection and monitoring of illicit trafficking while learning lessons for other theaters,” said Cmdr. Foster Edwards, 4th Fleet’s hybrid fleet director. “Southern Spear will continue our move away from short-duration experimentation into long-duration operations that will help develop critical techniques and procedures in integrating RAS into the maritime environment.”
U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command announced in late January that it will deploy long-dwell robotic surface vessels, small robotic interceptor boats, and vertical take-off and landing robotic air vessels to its area of responsibility as part of its efforts to improve maritime domain awareness in what it dubbed Operation Southern Spear.
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One of the companies involved in these efforts is Saildrone, which has produced what look like sailboats but are autonomous. The company is providing 20 of these drones for Operation Southern Spear, which is a continuation and expansion of Operation Windward Stack.
“Saildrone is proud to support our nation’s critical border security efforts,” said Tom Alexander, vice president of government relations. “As land borders become more secure, traffickers will exploit maritime pathways more than ever. We’re honored to serve, providing autonomous around-the-clock maritime surveillance to help stop smugglers before they reach our shores.”
