Daily News-Sun
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 the Valley
every day.
A drop house with 50 immigrants locked inside represents about
$125,000 worth of cargo. A midlevel manager in a human smuggling
organization might operate three or four drop houses simultaneously.
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.
SNIP
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.
"What you have is a situation where there is a great deal of money
available and the competition becomes more fierce, and that leads to
greater levels of sophistication," said Mesa police Chief George
Gascón. "Anybody that thinks that we in policing are really going to be
able to put a dent in this whole thing is not understanding the
economic forces at work."
SNIP
Smuggling fees are due when immigrants arrive at a drop house, a
place in the Valley where those who just crossed the border are
temporarily stashed. The drop house operator will telephone the
migrant's sponsor, someone who has agreed to come up with the smuggling
fee, with instructions on how to pay. Once the money is received, the
immigrant is let go or moved to his or her final destination.
The sponsor is usually a family member who might live in another state or in the migrant's home country.
The method favored by smugglers is to use legitimate wire services
such as Western Union and other companies that transfer cash across
state lines and international borders, according to Daniel Kelly of the
Arizona Department of Public Safety. Kelly is part of the financial
crimes task force, made up of agents from DPS, the Phoenix Police
Department, the Arizona Attorney General's Office and the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
SNIP
By 2003, the financial crimes task force had begun seizing some of
the transfers under state money laundering and forfeiture statutes.
Using data provided by Western Union, and interviews with the people
sending the money, police identified certain patterns linking the
payments to human smugglers, according to Kelly.
Most obvious was an individual collecting tens of thousands of
dollars worth of payments from dozens of different people throughout
the country, especially when the senders were in certain states known
as favored destinations of illegal immigrants, Kelly said.
The smugglers adapted when police started blocking those transfers and seizing the payments.
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The latest tactic used by human smugglers is called "triangulation"
by the financial crimes task force. Instead of sending the money
directly to the drop house operators where the immigrants are being
kept, the sponsors wire it directly to smugglers in northern Sonora.
When the payment is received in Mexico, the drop house operator is contacted by phone and the immigrant is released.
An analysis done in February 2006 showed that in a two-month period,
about $28 million in wire transfers were sent from the United States to
201 Western Union stores in Sonora, Mexico. Eighteen Western Union
stores located in prime human smuggling hubs accounted for about $19
million of those transfers, showing they had become the favored places
for the smugglers to pick up the money they were owed, according to
Kelly.
Three individuals picked up a total of about $375,000 in money
transfers in Caborca, a small town about 60 miles south of the
international border, during that two-month time frame, according to
court records. Other stores that took in the bulk of the Western Union
business in Sonora were located in Altar, Nogales, Agua Prieta and San
Luis Rio Colorado.
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Goddard's office argues legitimate remittances tend to be in smaller
denominations, and should be scattered throughout Mexico rather than
concentrated in the northern Sonoran region that is the hub of the
smuggling industry.
With the money now going to Mexico, the challenge for human
smugglers has become getting money into the United States so that
people on the Arizona side of the operation can get paid, according to
Goddard, whose office handles the legal work associated with the
seizures of smuggling payments.
"We have made the process more difficult," Goddard said. "It was
just dead easy in the past to simply walk into Western Union and pick
up all the money you needed for all of the people that have been
smuggled. Now you've got to get cash across the American border. And
there are going to be misses in the process. There are going to be
seizures and there is going to be disruption."
Arpaio said he had 100 deputies in Thursday's task force. Mesa police said 131 officers were patrolling on special assignment.
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