Thread: Gunmen kill two migrants on U.S.-Mexico border

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Unknown gunmen fired on a truck packed with suspected illegal immigrants in southern Arizona early on Friday, killing two people and wounding a third, police said.

The gunmen killed a man and a woman traveling in a pickup truck near Green Valley, some 30 miles south of Tucson, Pima County Sheriff's Department said.

Spokeswoman Dawn Barkman said the dead were believed to be Mexican immigrants traveling with three family groups from the poor southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

Barkman said two children were among at least 14 people packed into the extended-cab pickup truck.

Each year U.S. border police catch more than a million undocumented immigrants crossing north from Mexico, many of them through the desert corridor south of Tucson. There are an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

Last month gunmen shot dead three Guatemalan immigrants and wounded two others in an attack on a back road northwest of Tucson. Investigators in that incident said rival people-trafficking networks were likely responsible.

Police say increased security on the U.S.-Mexico border has made human trafficking a more profitable activity, resulting in increased violence among smugglers.

A smuggling ring that Arizona police say flew thousands of illegal immigrants across the United States from the Phoenix area was busted earlier this week with 16 people indicted, authorities said on Thursday.

Authorities said nearly $2 million in bookings were made by the ring.
http://link.toolbot.com/reuters.com/71578

Investigators in that incident said rival people-trafficking networks were likely responsible.

perhaps this is the case here.

It is so prevelant on the front lines that the smugglers are battling over the illegals money too just like the traiterous corporations and king george. This is a money making operation all the way around huh, like modern slavery.

I honestly wouldn't put all my apples in that cart, the origins of the lead that is. Imagine living on the border and not only watching your country go to hell, you have to watch your home and property be destroyed at the hands of these invaders too.

Why would anyone take kids along on a criminal endeavor?
If criminals break into your home, are you going to check ID's, or are you going to come out-a-blazin?

Think the Mexican government will do a thorough investigation?

Last month gunmen shot dead three Guatemalan immigrants and wounded two others in an attack on a back road northwest of Tucson. Investigators in that incident said rival people-trafficking networks were likely responsible.

Geez....what kind of monsters are these people?

Originally Posted by americangirl

Last month gunmen shot dead three Guatemalan immigrants and wounded two others in an attack on a back road northwest of Tucson. Investigators in that incident said rival people-trafficking networks were likely responsible.

Geez....what kind of monsters are these people?

These are the most terrible kinds of monsters. To them money means more than people's lives. These are the kind of people who have infiltrated our government, all for the love of a lousey buck..............

Doesn't sound like smugglers to me.

http://www.wfsb.com/news/11458257/detai ... t&psp=news

Gunmen Ambush Illegal Immigrants; 2 Dead

POSTED: 5:58 pm EDT March 30, 2007
UPDATED: 6:14 pm EDT March 30, 2007


TUCSON, Ariz. -- There's been more violence on the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, one of the busiest crossing points for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.

A pickup packed with nearly two dozen suspected illegal immigrants and smugglers was ambushed by gunmen early Friday in southern Arizona.

Authorities said a man and a woman were killed and at least one other person was wounded in the attack about 20 miles south of Tucson.
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The assailants thought the pickup was smuggling narcotics that they had hoped to steal, authorities said. They said they based that in part on the driver of the pickup yelling out the window that he was carrying people, not drugs.

The 23 people investigators believe were in the truck included 20 members of three families from the Mexican state of Chiapas who had crossed into the U.S. on foot near Sasabe, Arizona.

Authorities said the pickup driver sped off when the shots rang out and then stopped. The passengers ran into the desert, officials said.

Published: 03.30.2007
2 suspects in fatal morning ambush are in custody
DAVID L. TEIBEL and CLAUDINE LoMONACO
Tucson Citizen
A planned hijacking of a drug load turned tragic Friday morning when bandits mistakenly opened fire on 23 illegal immigrants, including three small children, hidden in a pickup. A man and a woman were killed.
The group consisted of three families from Chiapas who were headed to Tucson and Los Angeles, authorities said.
Two suspects were apprehended Friday morning at a campsite a half a mile south of the shooting just west of Green Valley.
One of the suspects told investigators he and three others had been waiting in the desert for a couple of days and had been told to seize a drug load coming across the border.
The men, believed to be from Sinaloa, Mexico, will be charged Friday night, said Pima Sheriff Bureau Chief Richard Kastigar. Two other suspects are still at large.
At least one other immigrant was shot in the foot and chest and is being treated at a hospital, though none of the children was harmed.
The 23 were being brought into the United States by two or possibly three coyotes, or human smugglers, Kastigar said. Witnesses reported that one smuggler was shot in the hand, but agents have not found him. Kastigar said the group had hiked into the country near Sasabe and were picked up by the coyotes about 8 p.m. Thursday. They were packed into a 1986 King Cab Ford with a camper shell and driven north.
About 5 a.m. today near West Duval Mine Road and Caterpillar Trail, near the Caterpillar Inc. vehicle testing area, assailants showered the truck with bullets from the front and both sides, Kastigar said.
The travelers described bullets cutting into the rear of the pickup as the driver tried to flee, Kastigar said. After a brief chase, the driver brought the pickup to a halt, and its passengers fled into the surrounding desert.
Deputies who responded to the call to the Sheriff's Department at 5:10 a.m. found two dead and at least one injured, Kastigar said.
Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik said the shooting was part of "an epidemic" of violence along the border. He criticized the federal government at a news conference Friday morning for not giving local law enforcement agencies the resources they need to combat it. No narcotics were found in the vehicle, and one of the passengers heard the driver shout to the assailants that he was carrying only people, not drugs, Dupnik said.
U.S. Border Patrol agents were called to assist in a search for survivors, and a sheriff's airplane was sent to do an aerial-view search for them.
The truck had no plates and was registered to somebody in Henderson, Nev., Dupnik said.
Border Patrol agents followed footprints from the shooting site to a campsite about half a mile south where they found the two suspects and three high-powered long rifles, said Victor Manjarrez, assistant chief of the Tucson sector U.S. Border Patrol.
While deputies tried to make sense out of a chaotic scene several miles west of Green Valley, several other groups of illegal immigrants, unrelated to those ambushed, stumbled onto the scene and were taken into custody by Border Patrol agents.
The surviving immigrants are being held as potential witnesses in the crime, Manjarrez said.
Authorities have said such attacks have become increasingly common over recent years. More immigrants move into the United States through the Tucson area and more border criminals converge on the area to prey on them, robbing them of cash or kidnapping them for ransom from relatives.
"For a number of years, we have been seeing a flood of undocumented immigrants coming into the United States, and criminals are becoming more brazen" in their attacks on them, Kastigar said.
In discussing increased border violence, Kastigar referred to a Feb. 8 immigrant ambush in which three people were killed near Silverbell Mine.
In that case, 15 illegal immigrants were being driven in a pickup up along the 26900 block of West Silverbell Road when they were ambushed by four bandits in another vehicle who tried to force them to stop. When the pickup driver sped past, the bandits opened fire, killing two men and a woman. Survivors fled into the desert, sheriff's authorities said last month.
No arrests have been made in the triple slaying.
E-mail Teibel directly at dteibel@tucsoncitizen.com or LoMonaco at lomonaco@tucsoncitizen.com
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/frontpage/46634.php

Published: 03.30.2007

Two arrested in killing of illegal entrants near Green Valley (updated at 6:03 p.m.)
By Dale Quinn and Brady McCombs
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Two Mexican men were arrested Friday in connection with the fatal shooting of two suspected illegal entrants southwest of Green Valley Friday morning.

The men, Rosario Humberto Araujo Monares, 21, and Martin Flores Gaxiola, 18, both of of Sinaloa, Mexico, were found separately near a campsite about a half-mile south of where the shooting occurred, said Dawn Barkman, a Pima County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman. Investigators found three firearms at the campsite and continue to look for additional suspects. Araujo and Flores each face two counts of 1st degree murder and 21 counts of attempted 1st degree murder.

Investigators say statements made by the suspects indicate drugs were the motive for the shooting. The men told investigators they were in the area with the intent of intercepting a load of drugs, said Barkman.

According to investigators, 23 illegal entrants were crammed into a pickup truck headed north on Caterpillar Trail about five miles south of Duval Mine Road at about 5 a.m. when someone opened fire on them, killing two members of the group and injuring another.

Two people, both in their 30s and both of Chiapas, Mexico, were found dead at Duval Mine Road a few hundred feet from where the bullet-riddled extended cab pickup truck they were in came to rest on Caterpillar Trail, said Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. The injured man - a Guatemalan man with gunshot wounds to his ankle and torso - was found in the desert north of where the shots were fired. He was taken to a Tucson hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

The dead man's two young children were among three children between ages 7 and 6 months that were traveling with the group.

Friday's incident marks the fourth deadly ambush on illegal entrant groups heading north since January.

Armed ripoff teams, or bajadores, have become increasingly brazen in the past two years in their attempts to steal loads of drugs and people from smugglers, especially in the Interstate 19 corridor between Nogales and Tucson.

The group, comprised of members of three families, began their journey about 8 p.m. Thursday night near Sasabe, Sonora, Barkman said.

Officials haven't said how many shots were fired but at least a dozen bullet holes were visible in the windshield and front of the truck. None of the illegal entrants in the pickup saw the shooters, Dupnik said.

The truck continued traveling north after the shooting until it failed a few hundred yards south of Duval Mine Road. The 21 suspected illegal entrants who survived the shooting walked to Duval Mine Road carrying the two victims. At 5:10 a.m a passerby saw them and called 911, Barkman said.

Authorities continue searching for others believed to have been involved in the assault.

Alejandro Ramos Cardoso, spokesman for the Mexican Consulate in Tucson said the nationality of the all the members in the group has yet to be confirmed, but they believe the majority are from Chiapas.

Consulate staff don't know why these situations continue to occur but it's a troubling trend, he said.

"This is a situation that should worry both governments," Cardoso said. "We are seeing a repeat of the same kind of incidents that put the lives of so many in danger."

The witnesses, will be held in custody by the Pima County Sheriff's Office until they are no longer needed for the investigation, Barkman said.

U.S. Border Patrol agents were called in to assist the Sheriff's Department in the investigation and met with the survivors.

"They are extremely scared," said Gustavo Soto, Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman. "They just had two people die that were part of their group. "

The route the group appeared to have taken - coming northeast through the west desert corridor and angling toward I-19 south of Tucson - is a popular one for drug and human smugglers.

The route bypasses a Border Patrol checkpoint at Kilometer 48 on Interstate 19, and then allows smugglers to take entrants to Tucson and Phoenix. "They are trying to stay off the main roads to avoid being detected," Soto said.

In this case the illegal entrants were headed for Tucson, and then perhaps to Los Angeles, officials said.

This is the second deadly ambush on vehicles carrying illegal entrants in Pima County in the past two months.

On Feb. 8, in the far northwest side of Tucson near Silverbell Mine Road, unknown assailants opened fire on a truck carrying between 15-20 illegal entrants, killing three (a Guatemalan man, and a Mexican man and woman) and wounding two others.

The Sheriff's Department isn't near a solution in that case, Dupnik said. "The situation on the border, particularly in the Tucson Sector, has reached crisis proportions," Dupnik said.

The Tucson Sector has seen increased violence between human smugglers as Border Patrol and the National Guard ratcheted up enforcement along the border, said senior Shannon Stevens, a Border Patrol spokeswoman for the Tucson Sector.

Historically that violence was directed at Border Patrol agents, but now smugglers have become motivated to steal from one another as it has become more difficult to transport people and narcotics into the United States, she said.

"It's kind of a double-edged sword," she said.

The tragedy is a symptom of a failed immigration system that forces people coming to work into the desert and into the hands of smuggling rings that control the routes, said Kat Rodriguez, coordinating organizer for Coalición de Derechos Humanos, a Tucson-based immigrants' rights group. Increased enforcement has forced human smugglers into drug smuggling routes, which has caused the in-fighting, she said.

"It's so terrible," Rodriguez said. "It must have been a terrifying experience to have guns open fire and people dying."
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/printDS/176055