49 people found hiding in water truck

Border agent spots unlicensed tanker

By Tom Mallory

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

July 26, 2008

SAN DIEGO – Forty-nine people being smuggled into the United States were found yesterday packed inside the metal tank of a water truck that a Border Patrol agent noticed near the notorious Smuggler's Gulch.

The truck was coming out of a construction area, its driver apparently trying to blend in, when the agent saw that it didn't have a license plate, said Border Patrol Agent Jason Rodgers.

Rodgers said the agent followed the truck from Monument Road and Hollister Road in an under-the-speed-limit pursuit that ended nearby with the arrest of the driver and a passenger and the discovery of the people crammed inside.

“For someone to actually stuff 49 people inside a tanker like this, even though these criminals are breaking the law anyway, shows a complete disregard for human life,” Rodgers said.

He said most of the 49 people agents found inside the truck's cylindrical water tank were in the first stage of dehydration. Three of the women were pregnant – one eight months, and the others three and five months.

Another woman inside the tank had a dislocated ankle, Rodgers said.

Coyotes' millions harder to move

Smugglers find higher hurdles to entrants' payoffs

By Mark Flatten

EAST VALLEY TRIBUNE

MESA — A truck loaded with 10 illegal immigrants is worth about $25,000 to a human-smuggling organization. A successful operation can move three or four truckloads of immigrants from the Mexican border to metro Phoenix every day.

A drop house with 50 immigrants locked inside represents about $125,000 worth of cargo.

With numbers like those, it doesn't take long to add up to the estimated $2.5 billion smugglers generate annually by moving human cargo through Arizona. That figure, which comes from court records, only counts the upfront costs to the immigrants, which typically run about $2,500 a head.

So much cash is generated by human smugglers that one of the toughest parts of running their business is moving the money, according to a series of police affidavits related to state efforts to seize the illicit profits.

Beyond prosecuting hundreds of people involved in human-smuggling rings on criminal charges, police and prosecutors are going after the money generated by the criminal organizations.

The Arizona Financial Crimes Task Force, made up of agents from federal, state and local agencies, has seized about $17 million in wire transfers believed to be linked to the human-smuggling trade since the force was created in 2000. The task force has also brought criminal charges against the owners and employees of several car dealerships and travel agencies that, according to the indictments, supplied smugglers with vehicles and airline tickets to move the migrants through Arizona.

Searchers look for migrant woman's body

Apr. 18, 2008 08:02 AM

Associated Press

TUCSON- Officials in Santa Cruz County are searching the hills west of Nogales for the body of a migrant woman from Mexico.

Lt. Raoul Rodriguez of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department says the mother of 21-year-old Mayra Pacheco-Arevalos of Michoacan told them she had died in her arms Tuesday night.

The woman told authorities she and her daughter crossed the border west of Nogales on Tuesday morning. When her daughter became sick, their guide left them in the rugged country alone.

The mother walked to a house in the Rio Rico area the next morning.

Migrant-extortion plot earns coyote 31 years

by Michael Kiefer - Apr. 18, 2008 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

A man who ran a west Phoenix drophouse that extorted money from undocumented immigrants and held them hostage has been sentenced to 31 years in prison in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Arturo Nevarez Ugarte was one of two "coyotes" who went on trial on charges related to the September 2007 bust of a drophouse near 94th Avenue and McDowell Road.

He was arrested after several of his victims broke free from a locked closet, beat him unconscious with a curtain rod and escaped into the neighborhood to call police. Nevarez Ugarte, 34, was convicted in March on two counts each of kidnapping, extortion and armed robbery; he was sentenced April 11.

A second defendant, Sergio Guerrero Teran went to trial in April, but it ended in a mistrial because of juror misconduct. A new trial is scheduled for August.

According to Phoenix police Detective Alfredo Richard, drophouses are usually rented properties, and the smuggling operations are run so quietly that the neighbors are not aware of any unusual activity. The house in Nevarez Ugarte's case was in a rented single-family home in a residential area.

"This kind of incident affects an entire neighborhood," Richard said. "A drophouse isn't in a vacuum. The neighbors are affected when all these people come running out. The violence associated with it - handguns, shots fired - it's a strain on everyone."

Frustrated Smugglers Resort to Violence Against Border Patrol

Friday, March 07, 2008

Calexico, Calif. – Frustrated criminals increasingly are using violence to intimidate U.S. Border Patrol enforcement efforts by brazenly attacking agents near Calexico, Calif.

Yesterday afternoon at approximately 1 p.m., Border Patrol agents from the El Centro station were working three miles west of the Calexico port of entry when a group of suspected illegal aliens attempted to raft across the All-American Canal. The group, while still in close proximity to the border and having witnessed the quick response by nearby agents, was able to return back to Mexico before being apprehended.

After having returned to Mexico with the group of illegal aliens, three masked assailants/smugglers then re-entered the United States and began aggressively throwing rocks and threatening agents with physical injury. The agents on scene had to deploy their non-lethal force pepper ball launcher systems and saturated the area to subdue the assailants’ hostile actions. they eventually retreated back to Mexico.

No injuries were reported regarding this incident.

Police find second drop house Monday

Erin Kozak
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 10, 2008 09:53 PM

Police located a drop house in Phoenix on Monday afternoon, the second found in the Valley that day.

Phoenix police received a tip from a neighbor of the house, located near 87th Avenue and Thomas Road, about suspicious activity, Phoenix Police Lt. John White said. The neighbor reported seeing 10 men scoot out of a partially opened garage door and run away from the house.

Police arrived at the house and found 62 undocumented immigrants, including three pregnant females. The undocumented immigrants are reportedly from Mexico, Guatemala, and Ecuador, White said.

The undocumented immigrants reported that they were not being held against their will and that they had been brought to Arizona by a human smuggler, White said.