--- title: "A man dies after a Coast Guard medevac from a boat carrying 21 people off San Clemente Island" description: "A 56-year-old man was found unresponsive when Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection crews boarded a boat carrying 21 people near San Clemente Island on Wednesday. A helicopter crew hoisted him off and continued CPR to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where his pulse was restored. He later died. He has not been identified, and no cause of death has been released." category: "Los Angeles" category_url: https://herald.la/category/los-angeles author: "Desmond Clarke" published: 2026-08-01T19:52:00.000Z updated: 2026-08-01T19:52:00.000Z canonical: https://herald.la/article/a-man-dies-after-a-coast-guard-medevac-from-a-boat-carrying-21-people-off-san-cl tags: ["coast-guard", "san-clemente-island", "immigration", "border-patrol", "maritime"] --- # A man dies after a Coast Guard medevac from a boat carrying 21 people off San Clemente Island A 56-year-old man was found unresponsive when Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection crews boarded a boat carrying 21 people near San Clemente Island on Wednesday. A helicopter crew hoisted him off and continued CPR to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where his pulse was restored. He later died. He has not been identified, and no cause of death has been released. A man died this week after being airlifted from a boat off the Southern California coast, in an operation that began when a passing boater called it in. Around noon Wednesday, a good Samaritan alerted Coast Guard Sector Los Angeles-Long Beach to a suspected smuggling vessel near San Clemente Island, [NBC Los Angeles reported](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/migrant-boat-coast-guard-san-clemente-island/3924448/). Marine interdiction agents from Customs and Border Protection's Air and Marine Operations, along with a Coast Guard boarding team, responded and found 21 people aboard. One of them, a 56-year-old man, was unresponsive. Coast Guard personnel began CPR. ## The medevac A Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew from Station Ventura was diverted to carry out a medical evacuation. The aircrew hoisted the man aboard and kept performing CPR during the flight to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood. Medical staff there restored his pulse. He died later, NBC Los Angeles reported. The account does not say how long afterward. ## What is not known A good deal. The man has not been publicly identified. No cause of death has been released, and nothing in the reporting establishes whether he was already in distress before the boat was intercepted or became so during it. Neither the Coast Guard nor Customs and Border Protection has announced an investigation, and we found no statement from either agency addressing the circumstances beyond the operational account above. Those gaps are worth stating rather than filling. A person died in federal custody or immediately before entering it, and the sequence of events in the hours before the boarding is precisely what has not been described publicly. ## The other 20 The remaining passengers were detained and turned over to U.S. Border Patrol. Nothing has been reported about who they are, where they were from, or where they are now. Three agencies were involved in the operation: the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection's Air and Marine Operations, and Border Patrol. San Clemente Island is the southernmost of the Channel Islands, about 70 miles off the coast and owned by the U.S. Navy. Boats attempting to reach Southern California by sea generally pass well offshore to avoid detection, which puts them hours from any hospital if something goes wrong. On Wednesday, something did. ## Sources - [Boat carrying 21 migrants intercepted near San Clemente Island](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/migrant-boat-coast-guard-san-clemente-island/3924448/)