Reporting from Popotla, Mexico — Nallely and Heriberto Salgado boarded the Mexican fishing skiff bobbing off the Baja California coast last week and watched warily in the moonlight as 19 other people squeezed onto the vessel designed to carry no more than a dozen.
A smuggler piloting the 25-foot boat promised a short ride before landing on a beach in San Diego.
But 12 hours later, the Salgados were still being lashed with sea spray. The thick fog had burned off, leaving a panorama of brilliant blue, with no land in sight.
“We saw only ocean all around us,” said Nallely Salgado. “And we were running out of gas.”
With tougher enforcement and new barriers rising on land along the U.S.-Mexico border, many would-be immigrants like the ones crowded aboard the Tiburon are taking to the sea…. Details