Panga, not to be confused with the Hasbro game Jenga, is a boat used to ferry undocumented immigrants from south of the border into the U.S. illegally. But the crafts are being used in a game of sorts, a cat-and-mouse game with local authorities.
The cat won the latest round.
Twenty men and four women were arrested this morning in Laguna Beach, where they allegedly tried to enter the country illegally on a 25-foot panga, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.
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The desperate souls were taken into custody around 4:30 a.m. at Crystal Cove State Park, the Border Patrol's Gerardo Gutierrez told City News Service.
In many cases, warm bodies aren't all that are aboard pangas, but in this instance no drugs were found, according to Gutierrez.
Newport Beach police officers, Orange County sheriff's deputies and state parks police helped round-up the folks.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.