Human trafficking's profits spur horrors

Vicious organizations move thousands of immigrants through Valley every day

Dennis Wagner
The Arizona Republic

In the world of human smuggling, metro Phoenix has emerged as an enormous staging area where illegal immigrants are held hostage in apartments, motel rooms or rental homes until relatives pay their fees.

State investigators say it is a $2 billion-a-year, black-market business that drives illegal immigration, spreading corruption and violence through the Valley.

On any given day in the Valley, agents say, thousands of undocumented immigrants are stuffed into drophouses as "coyotes" collect the cash, arrange for transportation and fend off other smugglers who would steal migrant clients for ransom.

There are so many coyotes, estimated at more than 1,000, so many immigrants secreted in drop- houses, that money-transfer stores handle hundreds of millions of dollars a year in smuggling transactions. Friends or family already established in other states wire the payments to Phoenix.

During a federal court hearing last year, Special Agent Angel Rascon-Rubio of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement described metro Phoenix as "the hub" of immigrant smuggling. "I would say that 90 percent of the transactions dealing with the sale of human cargo, those smuggled across the (Arizona) border, occur right here."