Fond as I am of the Border Patrol, and sympathetic as I am to government press agents (I used to be one myself), I can 't let this go.
It seems that five illegals were "lost in the desert without food or water" and the Patrol sent its search and rescue team in action "along with Air and Marine assets" in an effort to "search the area". (My emphasis; quotes from their press release.)
In the unfortunate lexicon of the government, a plane is an air asset, and a boat is a marine asset, so we seem to have the Border Patrol pressies telling us that they used a boat to rescue some guys in the California desert! (The two assets are often listed together in press releases.)
The illegals were saved, but two of them had to be hospitalized before they could be sent back across the border; the Border Patrol often does this sort of thing and it should get credit for it.
As for their press guy, maybe his fingers kept moving in familiar patterns — "air and marine assets" — while his mind remained in neutral.
The full text of the press release can be read here. The release is not crystal clear on this point, but it sounds as if one of the illegals had a cell phone and called the Imperial County Sheriff's Office for help.