Under the cloak of darkness early Saturday morning in Imperial Beach, four of nine migrants hoping for a better life in the United States didn't survive the journey . The smuggling boat they were on flipped over.

Retired lifeguard Sgt. Frank Powell remembers the danger he used to race into, getting those calls.

"They don't know what to expect," Powell said. "They don't know how many bodies. They don't know who's in the water, yelling for help. They don't know how many people are involved. They don't know if it's a drug cartel, were they smuggling drugs, or whether they could be ambushed."

San Diego’s coast is no stranger to deadly human smuggling operations.

Eight adults died off the coast of Black's Beach, when two smuggling boats flipped over in March 2023. At the time, the lifegua

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