A group of San Clemente residents who have volunteered to clear brush to stave off fires in the city’s wildland areas soon might take on an immigration-related role — monitoring the coast against landings of panga boats carrying unauthorized immigrants.
The idea is being pushed by Mayor Steve Knoblock, who plans to ask the city council to upgrade cameras at the San Clemente Pier to include thermal imaging, a move aimed at making it easier to prevent nighttime panga arrivals. Knoblock’s plan, to be pitched during the council meeting slated for Feb. 4, also calls for the images generated by the cameras to be available to the public. It’s unclear how much the camera upgrades might cost.
Panga landings, in which undocumented people, usually from Mexico, typically run ashore and meet up with others who take them inland, have happened along Orange County shores for decades. But they’ve increased since the end of the pandemic and, over the past year, Knoblock said San Clemente has seen at least six such landings, each involving an estimated 15 to 20 immigrants.
Under Knoblock’s plan, local volunteers would monitor the thermal imaging cameras — which pick up images at night — and notify immigration officials anytime they see a boat that they believe to be carrying undocumented people.
“The goal is to have the pangas — small vessels that have brought undocumented migrants ashore — identified before they hit our shore and report it to ICE,” Knoblock said.
“These pangas crammed with 25 individuals come into our beach and then scatter like flies.”
Knoblock said he believes the number of illegal vessels will likely increase because of the stepped-up border enforcement by the new Trump administration.
In addition to urging local residents to help in immigration enforcement, Knoblock also plans to ask the council for support in a second track to curb immigration, pushing to have San Clemente join Huntington Beach in its litigation challenging California Values Act (SB 54), better known as the sanctuary state law.
Under the California Values Act, passed in 2017, cities in the state are limited in how they let law enforcement officials investigate, interrogate, detain or arrest people for purposes of immigration enforcement — a category of law that falls under federal authority. Exceptions spelled out in SB 54 let local police help federal agencies to detain or identify immigrants who have committed violent crimes and serious misdemeanors. Huntington Beach is suing the state, the governor and the attorney general in an effort to let city police assist federal agencies in stepped up immigration enforcement and Knoblock wants San Clemente to join that legal effort.
“Currently, with SB 54, local law enforcement is hamstrung from cooperating with federal authorities,” he said.
“The state of California is acting in an absurd fashion by instructing law enforcement at the local level that they’re not to cooperate with ICE. To protect illegal aliens instead of our citizens is a total abrogation of their responsibility.”
Councilmembers Victor Cabral and Rick Loeffler have voiced support and Knoblock said he’s heard of interest from other Orange County mayors who might want to support the lawsuit.
It’s not clear how much joining a lawsuit might cost taxpayers. In Huntington Beach, the city attorney is an elected position, and expenses related to the lawsuit might be higher for cities that hire out for legal advice.
At least one immigrants rights advocate pushed back against Knoblock’s description of SB 54 and questioned the idea of using local volunteers to help ICE.
Mai Do, research and policy manager for the Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, said the idea that SB 54 hamstrings local law enforcement in efforts to curb unlawful immigration is incorrect.
“They are allowed to work with immigration enforcement under some very specific circumstances under state law,” she said. “It’s not like state law bars them entirely from working with immigration enforcement. So that’s really just perpetuating a myth and disinformation about how state law works.”
She added that any move by San Clemente to join in Huntington Beach’s lawsuit over SB 54 would be a waste of tax money. The lawsuit, she said, “will go nowhere; SB 54 is state law.”
When it comes to Knoblock’s proposal for the volunteer group to step up, Do said she worries about how far that might go. She said her research has found that similar groups in other communities have overstepped, becoming a “vigilante militia” that might use racial profiling to identify possible illegal immigrants and kidnapping individuals who, in the group’s view, should be detained.
But Knoblock said he does not believe that the volunteer group — now called Secure Our Canyons and Community — will go that route.
“I don’t believe any city initiative would cause people to respond one way or another in their decision of whether or not to report illegal aliens to ICE,” he said. “They are free to do that right now if they feel t is necessary.”
Knoblock said San Clemente residents want to help. Before establishing the group working to stave off possible fires in the wildlands, Knoblock said some San Clemente residents were working to monitor the community of Talega in the wake of a series of burglaries attributed to alleged Chilean gangs.
“We had citizens cruise the neighborhoods to protect themselves,” Knoblock said.
At least four Chilean nationals were arrested earlier this month by police from Glendale and Beverly Hills, who said the men were responsible for a string of burglaries in Southern California.
In addition to seeking upgrades for the cameras on the pier, Knoblock also will ask the council to authorize the city to post phone numbers for Border Patrol on the city website. That would make it easier for residents to report potential crimes to ICE and local authorities.
The Feb. 4 City Council meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. at City Council chambers on the second floor at 910 Calle Negocio.
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