The cartels are running out of ideas, and it's getting fun to watch. New video obtained by RedState purports to show human smugglers using wave runners to ferry illegal aliens onto the shoreline near San Diego.

Jet skis. The same machines your uncle rents on vacation in Lake Havasu. The cartels are now loading people onto personal watercraft and buzzing them toward a California beach like it's a spring break stunt.

I spent twelve years in Army military police, a lot of it working checkpoints, and I can tell you what this actually is: desperation. When the land routes get locked down, when the ports of entry get watched, the smugglers don't quit. They improvise. And improvised smuggling is sloppy smuggling.

Think about the math on this one. By my rough estimate, a personal watercraft fits maybe two people besides the driver, and these machines aren't built for passengers or long open-water runs. So these crews are making trip after trip, in open water, in daylight, off one of the most surveilled coastlines in the country. Every run is a gamble on fuel, weather, and whether a CBP air asset or a Coast Guard cutter is sitting over the horizon. That's a terrible business model, and I'm fine with it being a terrible business model.

And the maritime route was never a loophole. The Pacific is a big open space with your name on it if you try to cross it illegally. There's no crowd to disappear into mid-ocean, no cargo container to hide in, no border town to slip through. A jet ski in open water is one of the most visible things a smuggler can operate, and the video now exists to prove it. When your smuggling plan depends on not being filmed off a major American city, you don't have a plan.

What the smugglers are really telling us with this stunt: the pressure is working. You don't downgrade from go-fast boats and tractor-trailers to jet skis because business is booming. You do it because everything else got shut down, and this is what's left. Every dumb method you see on video is a receipt for enforcement doing its job somewhere else.

And a word for anyone tempted to feel bad for the people bouncing across the waves on the back of a wave runner: they paid a criminal smuggling organization for that ride. In my view, you don't get to hand cash to the same cartels running people across the border and then play the innocent tourist when the ride goes sideways. The smuggler got paid either way. That's the only guarantee in this business.

Watch the video for yourself. Somewhere there's a Border Patrol agent reviewing the same footage, and I promise you he's smiling. Jet skis off San Diego. The cartels have officially run out of good ideas, and I'm going to enjoy every bad one they try next.