Results 1 to 3 of 3

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

  1. #1
    Senior Member dragonfire's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Location
    Lehigh Acres, Fl
    Posts
    929

    Smuggling of Brazilians, other migrants growing in South Florida

    Records show that an increasing number of Brazilians are being smuggled into South Florida through a route that first takes them through Paris, London and the Bahamas.

    By Al Chardy


    achardy@elnuevoherald.com

    A Brazilian couple was arraigned in federal court in Miami recently, charged with attempting to smuggle undocumented immigrants aboard boats from the Bahamas.

    The arraignment Oct. 15 of Fabio Rodrigues Froes and Juliana Rosa Tome Froes, before Magistrate Judge Chris McAliley, where they pleaded not guilty, came less than a month after they were arrested in South Florida in a federal case that has led to the exposure of a little-known dimension to the issue of migrant smuggling.

    Court records show that federal investigators from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) believe that the couple was part of a sophisticated and vast smuggling network that brought relatively well-off undocumented Brazilians to South Florida via a convoluted underground system that included flights from Brazil to France, then England and finally the Bahamas where the migrants boarded boats for the final leg of the journey to South Florida. The smuggling trips date back to at least 2009.

    While Cuban and Haitian migrant smuggling networks receive the bulk of public attention in South Florida, smugglers who bring undocumented immigrants from other countries are also active but generally keep under the public radar. Besides Cubans and Haitians, Coast Guard vessels also have interdicted immigrants of many other nationalities on boats headed for South Florida, including Chinese, Dominicans, Mexicans and Ecuadorans in recent years.

    “While the primary [migrant smuggling] threat comes from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the People’s Republic of China, and Cuba, the Coast Guard has interdicted migrants of various nationalities throughout the world,” according to a statement posted on the Coast Guard’s Miami district website.

    In another example of what may be an increase in the smuggling of undocumented migrants of various nationalities on boats, a Customs and Border Protection vessel interdicted on Oct. 8 a boat carrying a Romania, three Brazilians, two Jamaicans and seven Haitians. The Romanian, Gabriel Florica, said he was the captain of the vessel that had been stopped off Palm Beach County. He told investigators he had paid $2,000 to a person identified only as Leroy and then traveled from Britain to the Bahamas, where he boarded his boat.

    According to Coast Guard figures, during fiscal year 2012 that ended Sept. 20, the largest numbers of interdicted undocumented migrants were 1,275 Cubans, 977 Haitians and 456 Dominicans. There were also 79 Mexicans stopped at sea and 138 others of various nationalities.

    Court records in the Froes case show that the alleged Brazilian smuggling network was uncovered because of a routine stop of a suspicious boat at Hillsboro Inlet near Pompano Beach in Broward County two years ago.

    Attorneys for the Brazilian suspects declined comment or could not be reached for comment.

    On July 18, 2010, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission vessel patrolling Hillsboro Inlet in the Intracoastal Waterway encountered the boat Got Crabs.

    The FFWC officer, Michael Naujoks, boarded the vessel, which carried four people. One of them, under questioning, presented a Brazilian identification card that identified him as Wellington Dos Santos Silva.


    After Dos Santos and the others on board were interviewed by U.S. Border Patrol agents at Alsdorf Park Marina near Pompano Beach, Dos Santos admitted that he had tried to enter the United States illegally from the Bahamas. It was the first indication that Dos Santos was one among perhaps dozens of undocumented Brazilians smuggled by the alleged ring.

    At that point, the Border Patrol summoned agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s ICE to investigate the possibility of an “alien smuggling organization,” according to an ICE affidavit filed in Miami federal court.

    During the investigation, Dos Santos told ICE investigators that he paid $16,050 to a travel agency in Brazil, identified in court records as Costamares Travel, as the price to be smuggled to the United States.

    Dos Santos’ claim was the first in a series of similar admissions by other Brazilian immigrants who also told ICE investigators that they paid the same agency similar fees to be smuggled to South Florida.

    Dos Santos’ story, outlined in the ICE affidavit, describes the convoluted smuggling route the immigrants, most of them previously deported from the United States, took to reach South Florida.

    According to the ICE affidavit, Dos Santos said he was instructed to travel from Brazil to Paris, then to London and finally the Bahamas where he stayed for one month awaiting the boat ride to U.S. shores.

    While in custody at the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Dos Santos allegedly told an ICE informant that his contact at Costamares Travel was a woman named Juliana and that she was involved in smuggling Brazilians to the United States for a fee of about $6,000 per person.

    The ICE affidavit said the fees were paid to associates of Juliana in Newark, N.J., identified only as Ana or Poliana and Alexandro, Alex or Renato. The affidavit said Juliana was later identified as Juliana Rose Tome Froes, the woman arrested with her husband in September.

    “Juliana,” the affidavit said, “gave specific instructions to Dos Santos to aid in his smuggling, such as directing him to dress and act like a tourist from Brazil, to discard his Brazilian passport that had been issued from a U.S.-based Brazilian consulate and obtain one from Brazil, and she explained that his itinerary through Europe would support his tourist cover story,” the ICE affidavit said. “Dos Santos stated that Juliana arranged his air travel from Brazil to Paris, then London and the Bahamas. At each stage of the trip, Dos Santos would speak to Juliana about his status and receive instructions.”

    A prior boat interdiction on Sept. 16, 2009, had given federal officials preliminary indications of the smuggling ring.

    On that date, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Bluefin stopped a suspicious vessel traveling to South Florida about 10 miles east of Boynton Beach in Palm Beach County.

    Boarding officer Christopher Spurlock and the boarding crew of five observed six people on the boat. Three were later identified as Brazilian nationals, some previously deported from the United States. One of the Brazilians subsequently told federal investigators he had paid $8,000 to be smuggled back to South Florida, via France, Britain and the Bahamas.


    A second Brazilian undocumented immigrant, identified as Walderson Gomes Da Silva, told investigators that he had paid fees to be smuggled after meeting with Juliana and her husband Fabio, court records show. Da Silva told investigators that he had been smuggled into the United States at least three times by the ring. One of the times he was smuggled, the records say, he paid about $16,000 and also traveled to the Bahamas via Paris and London.

    Smuggling of Brazilians, other migrants growing in South Florida - Americas - MiamiHerald.com


    Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!

  2. #2
    Administrator Jean's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Location
    California
    Posts
    65,443
    Added to Homepage with slightly amended title:
    http://www.alipac.us/content/smuggli...-florida-1075/
    Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts at https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  3. #3
    Senior Member sacredrage's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Location
    South FL
    Posts
    927
    I read in the SunSentinel (a South Florida newspaper based in Broward County) that Castro is now allowing Cubans as a whole (except for the scientists and mainly governmental workers) to have free travel out of Cuba-the article automatically had the attitude that those who leave would not go back, and that those who have relatives over here will come here-and we have the automatic "wet foot, dry foot" policy for any Cuban who touches our shores! Cubans were the main component in the so-called Latinization of Miami, and they are the reason Miami is what it has become since the early 1980's-and very few Americans are comfortable to even visit there from other areas anymore, the tourism now primarily comes from other countries. Sometimes you can't even find someone in stores to help you in English (including Sears!), people are unfriendly on average, litter is everywhere downtown on corners, people turn their domestic dogs and cats loose to go homeless on the streets or in the Everglades in large numbers, and one often finds decapitated birds in the street as many of them worship dieties who require that (at least when the Judeo-Christian God required sacrifices, He was classy about what to do with them!!)and except for the old buildings that predate the Latinization of Miami (and most street names haven't been changed), one feels like they are in a Third World country. I do NOT want the Cubans to turn other areas into what they turned Miami into-and at least the same amount who came here before (if not more) may be well on their way with plans to move here and do the same!!
    Last edited by sacredrage; 10-30-2012 at 02:11 PM.

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •