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May 2, 2006
Human-Smuggling Inquiry Leads to Raids and Arrests
By RICHARD G. JONES
TRENTON, May 1 — Federal agents on Monday broke up what they said was a human-smuggling ring based in New Jersey that investigators believe may have forced immigrant women to work as prostitutes.

Investigators with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Newark arrested two brothers and detained more than 60 others on Monday morning after raiding 15 sites, including places in West New York, Union City and elsewhere in Hudson County.

Officials said that they were also caring for a dozen children who were found during the raids. Investigators said they were the children of the women who were taken into custody.

Immigration officials said they were still trying to gauge the scope of the ring's operations, which almost exclusively involved Mexican immigrants, and determine if the women had been forced into prostitution.

"We know it's an illegal smuggling operation," said Kyle Hutchins, special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Newark. "We do not know who smuggled these people. We don't even know if they were forced into prostitution. They might have been prostitutes in Mexico who came up here to make more money."

Two brothers, Jose Luis Notario, 50, and Ignacio Notario, 46, were arrested in Union on Monday on charges related to illegally transmitting money. Jose Luis Notario, who was born in Mexico and is a legal permanent resident of the United States, was also charged with harboring illegal immigrants. His brother, who was living in the country illegally, faces a deportation order, Mr. Hutchins said.

Officials say they believe that the Notarios traveled frequently to ferry money between the United States and Mexico. In addition, a criminal complaint filed against the brothers accused Ignacio Notario of illegally transporting "medicine used in the prostitution business, including antibiotics, abortion-inducing drugs and condoms" that they said he had obtained from drug stores in Mexico and then smuggled into the United States.

The complaint accused Ignacio Notario of selling some of the items at his convenience store, Su Tienda Mexicana, in West New York.

Both men made their initial appearance in federal court in Newark on Monday.

The investigation into the ring began about 18 months ago when federal agents working in San Diego obtained the address of what the complaint called a safe house in New Jersey, which was raided on Monday, Mr. Hutchins said.

The ring appears to be related to a smuggling operation that originated in San Miguel Tenancingo, in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala, from which women are taken to the United States to work as prostitutes, the complaint said.

"Once the females are smuggled into the United States, a large percentage are transported to the East Coast, where they are put to work as prostitutes, some against their will," the complaint read.

The women were taken to houses in northern New Jersey and in Jackson Heights, Queens, from which they were sent to work weeklong shifts in brothels in Maryland and Virginia, according to the complaint. It was unclear Monday night if the house in Queens was raided.

At the end of the women's shifts, the complaint said, they were brought "back to the 'safe houses' where they live with their traffickers."

It was during one of those return trips, on Sunday night, Mr. Hutchins said, that the authorities made their first break in the case. The state police pulled over a car and a van and detained 10 women and 2 drivers who were returning from Maryland.

On Monday morning, agents raided various "safe houses" in northern New Jersey and detained 26 women and 28 men. Charges were pending against them.

Mr. Hutchins said that it might take several weeks for the authorities to put together a comprehensive portrait of the ring, but he said more arrests were expected.