Part One:

Alien Smugglers Inc.

Cartels are huge, profitable and ruthless — and stretch from U.S. to Central America

By Ignacio Ibarra
The Arizona Daily Star

DOUGLAS - The U.S. crackdown on illegal immigration here has created a high-stakes people-smuggling network that mimics drug trafficking in its organization, profitability and ruthlessness.

And like the drug cartels, the organizations are a threat not only to those who use their services but to society on both sides of the border.

``These are huge, interlocking cartels . . . very much like drug-trafficking organizations that rely on connections, reputations and payoffs,'' said Jack Weaver, an Immigration and Naturalization Service anti-smuggling agent based in Phoenix.

``I didn't expect the really detailed record-keeping that they do. It's a big money-making business, and they have to account for every expense in dealing with each other.''

As U.S. Border Patrol agents and enforcement resources have increased here, alien-smuggling organizations have shown a remarkable ability to adapt to the growing pressure, he said.

INS planners and Border Patrol officials said they anticipated the evolution of sophisticated alien-smuggling organizations, but have been surprised by the speed at which they have developed.

George Lopez, an assistant chief with the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, said alien smugglers have always been here, ``But our strategy has forced them into a more organized method of smuggling.''

No more free-lancing

Five years ago, people-smuggling around Agua Prieta, Sonora, and Douglas was an informal system of independent opportunists pointing migrants to holes in a porous border fence. Today it's a complex network of smuggling organizations that stretch from the border deep into the United States, Mexico and Central America.

``You just can't do the free-lancing anymore,'' said Lopez. ``These smuggling organizations now chart out every leg of the trip from the moment they arrive on the border to where they will cross and how they will be housed and transported.''

Like their law-enforcement counterparts, smugglers rely on increasingly sophisticated technology to aid them in keeping track of the opposition.

That kind of organization takes money - so much money that the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other law-enforcement agencies have targeted suspected narcotics traffickers in money-laundering cases, only to discover the subjects are smuggling people, not drugs.

Five years ago, people-smuggling in Agua Prieta, Sonora, top half of photo, and Douglas was informal; today it's a complex network of smuggling organizations.

Five years ago, with just over 300 agents in the Tucson sector, most Mexican border crossers didn't use smugglers, and those who did could pay as little as $200 for transport from Agua Prieta to Phoenix.

At the beginning of this year, with more than 1,100 agents assigned to the sector - more than 300 in Douglas alone - the same trip costs up to $1,500.

Since then, increased competition among smugglers, also known as coyotes, appears to have pushed the price down to $600 to $800, said Border Patrol spokesman Rob Daniels.

For Central Americans, the cost can be $9,000 or more.

Agua Prieta Mayor Vicente Teran Uribe said the city estimates that in March, at the height of the migrant season this year, transient migrants in the city pushed daily population figures to more than 200,000 people, more than double the normal population.

``At $1,500 each, you do the math.'' Teran Uribe said. ``This people-smuggling business has surpassed narco-trafficking here, and the Border Patrol strategy is the reason.''

Jaqueline Hagen, director of the Center for Immigration Research at the University of Houston, said the U.S. effort to curb illegal immigration has changed the border-crossing experience.

``Most research shows that there has been an increase in the reliance on smugglers. There's no doubt it's more difficult to enter now . . . and it's more dangerous,'' she said.

A stronger Border Patrol presence and an ongoing problem of bandits preying on illegal border crossers mean few travel without a guide, said Maria de la Paz Reyes Diaz, director of Grupo Beta, a Mexican migrant protection force.

``Even if I knew a way to cross, what good would it do?'' said Francisco Nunez, a 35-year-old farm worker from Durango, Mexico. ``Without a coyote - someone with a car or some way to reach Phoenix - la migra would get me for sure.''

Less risky than drugs

Smuggling organizations have no problem recruiting young people from both sides of the border to handle the work of gathering and guiding groups of migrants, de la Paz Reyes said.

``They know that they can mix in among the migrants, and if they get caught it's likely to be an administrative arrest and then they're back out, and the (migrants) are there waiting for them,'' she said.

``It's not like drug trafficking, where arrest and penalties are more certain, and that makes it attractive.''

Even when people-smugglers are arrested in the United States, they face a maximum of five years in prison - far less than a drug trafficker could expect. On a first offense, they can expect probation and deportation.

Alien smuggling is a more serious offense in Mexico, which recently increased the penalty from a five-year-maximum, bond-eligible offense to six to 12 years without bond.

But Mexicans don't consider the migration of their fellow citizens illegal, so enforcement efforts against the coyotes who move them are not a high priority.

The Border Patrol makes a special effort to identify and isolate people-smugglers, but the principal witnesses - the aliens - are not usually cooperative in any effort to deprive them of their guides.

Sometimes the smugglers are Mexican nationals themselves. But Bisbee police have seen an assortment of people driving illegal entrants north, including Phoenix-area youths and young Cubans with links to the Marielito exodus of the 1980s, which included criminals released from Cuban prisons, said Sgt. Phil Eastburn.

Glimpsing the networks

Bisbee police have detained more than 800 vehicles carrying a total of more than 5,000 illegal entrants since January. Police have also found in those vehicles records that hint at the sophistication of alien smugglers.

A logbook taken from an Agua Prieta-based smuggler lists expenses that include more than $2,000 per trip for the purchase of a vehicle and similar expenses for housing and feeding groups of illegal entrants. It also recorded the amounts the driver was owed by smugglers with code names like Patroncito, Mister 1 and Mister 2.

Young men from Santa Ana, Sonora, make their way toward the U.S. border at Agua Prieta. Mayor Vicente Teran Uribe says that in March, at the height of the migrant season, transients pushed the city's daily population to more than 200,000, more than double the normal population.

In one vehicle, Bisbee police retrieved a stack of letters believed to be tax withholding reports made out to illegal entrants by several Phoenix-based landscaping and construction firms.

``There's too much of this going on for it to be a coincidence. This isn't just a few people getting together to buy a car - this is racketeering,'' said Bisbee police Sgt. Bill Bagby.

Weaver, the INS anti-smuggling agent, said the major smuggling organizations use subcontractors of a sort in local smuggling groups. The larger entities have their own networks of people recruiting clients but also finance the overhead of local organizations to control far larger groups of migrants, he said.

How sophisticated the organizations can be was made apparent in May, when a federal grand jury issued 17 indictments after a yearlong investigation of a smuggling ring specializing in importing Central American and Mexican workers.

Weaver said the case was unusual in that INS agents were able to infiltrate the organization at all levels and, with the help of the Internal Revenue Service, were able to document more than $500,000 in wire transfers related to the smuggling operation.

The smuggling ring charged migrants half the fee, sometimes $9,000 for Central Americans, at the start of the journey. Once the immigrants arrived in Phoenix or Los Angeles, family members or other third parties were contacted to pay the rest.

At one Phoenix safehouse, the INS alleges, smugglers fed illegal entrants just four or five tortillas a day and held them for a week or more until someone showed up to pay the balance.

In one case, undercover INS agents were forced to ransom a couple held for nearly a month before fearful family members finally went to to police because they could not pay. The family members are now witnesses in the case against the smuggling organization.

Tight-knit groups

One difficulty in attacking smuggling organizations is that leaders usually live in Mexico or Central America. They employ only people they trust, resulting in close-knit operations in which Central Americans smuggle Central Americans and Mexicans smuggle Mexicans. The only exceptions are brincadores - the people who lead the actual border crossings - who are nearly always Mexican and local.

In the rare cases when they are used, U.S. citizens, particularly Anglos, fill only the lowest rung of the organization as drivers and couriers. That made infiltration of the smuggling ring difficult for INS agents, Weaver said.

``We were lucky - some things bounced our way and we were able to get in. We learned a lot of things about the structure of these organizations that can be applied to other investigations,'' said Weaver, who would not discuss details of the case because the investigation is ongoing and prosecution is pending.

There is little information on how many people have been prosecuted for people-smuggling in the United States, but Grupo Beta agents have arrested hundreds of smugglers since starting operations in Agua Prieta in 1996.

Until last month, Grupo Beta was the only law enforcement agency monitoring the Mexican migration though the town. But growing concern for public safety here has prompted the arrival of a special state task force to investigate smuggling and related crimes.

``We've been familiarizing ourselves with the area, and once that is done we intend to investigate and infiltrate the smuggling organizations and try to put an end to the assaults, robberies and other crimes that are occurring here,'' said a task force agent who asked not to be identified.

Additional resources will no doubt help, but de la Paz Reyes said she doubts that more arrests alone will solve the problem.

``There are always more people to take their place. It is an attractive business that pays well and provides a steady clientele,'' she said.

And it continues to grow and spread, she said.

Grupo Beta patrols now include the areas in and around Naco. And since the beginning of the year, Grupo Beta has been monitoring a significant shift of migrant and smuggling activity to the mining community of Cananea, about 25 miles south of the border.

Lopez, the Border Patrol assistant chief, said illegal immigration and alien smuggling in southeast Arizona have developed more rapidly than anticipated, forcing the agency to redeploy people and resources.

Smugglers looking east

But in the end, he said, the pressure will continue to build until the smugglers decide the cost is too high and take their business elsewhere, as they did after the agency's crackdown in San Diego. The Border Patrol anticipates the next hot spot will be the easternmost portion of the Texas-Mexico border.

``This is an enforcement strategy; it's not something you throw in the oven and half an hour later it's done,'' Lopez said. ``It takes time.''

One young crossing guide who would not give his name insisted the Border Patrol would do better to leave him to his work.

``They're going to cross anyway,'' he said. ``What I do is just a service. Imagine how many more people would get hurt or die if they couldn't count on my help.''

To read the rest of the stories in part one as well as the rest of the series, please visit the archives.