Human traffic hits home: Escondido 'drop house' a stop in increasingly lucrative smuggling corridor

By: EDWARD SIFUENTES - Staff Writer


FEBRUARY 2, 2008
NORTH COUNTY TIMES, SAN DIEGO / RIVERSIDE COUNTY

The Escondido neighborhood around the 1800 block of Cortez Avenue is about as idyllic as one is likely to find in North County.

View A Video



The lawns are well tended. Some neighbors leave their garage doors open during the day. Older residents stroll in the early morning hours.

It is not the kind of place where one might expect to find a virtual prison for illegal immigrants. But that's what Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents found when they raided the house at 1809 Cortez Ave. on April 15.

Tamara Dudoit, a 41-year-old mother of four, rented the home in this quiet neighborhood within a walking distance of the Escondido Country Club's golf course.

She kept dozens of people in a room, locked behind closed doors and a boarded-up window to prevent their escape.

For four months, the home on the nice block was part of an international web of human smuggling, a "drop house" where people from Mexico were held against their will while traffickers extorted higher fees from their terrified loved ones.

From interviews with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at the agency's San Diego headquarters and piles of court documents, a picture emerges of a disturbing and violent trend in the lucrative business that fuels illegal immigration.

Inside that single-family home in Escondido with an unassuming exterior, Martin Guadarrama was held several days for ransom last spring.

Smugglers told his wife, Francisca, he would be chopped to pieces and scattered if she didn't pay.

Smugglers had brought him and 30 other Mexican illegal immigrants to the house until payments for their passage were arranged.

In the last two years, immigration officials said they have found eight such drop houses in North County, four in the Oceanside area and four in Escondido.

Drop houses, a key link in human smuggling operations, are where smugglers hide illegal immigrants as they collect their fees and make their travel arrangements.

Business is brisk
Vulnerable migrant workers are becoming a lucrative commodity for bands of thugs whose main purpose is to make money ---- lots of it.

A consequence of tougher border security measures has been the rising fees that illegal immigrants are willing to pay guides to help them cross into the United States from Mexico, and other nations around the world.

In the past, agents say, some people may have been able to cross into the United States on their own or pay someone $250 to smuggle them.

Today, those trying to enter the country illegally must cough up an average of $2,500 per person, agents say.

In Arizona, drop houses have become the setting for the worst abuses in immigrant smuggling, such as assaults, rapes and hostage-takings in which customers are the victims.

Gangs have also forced their way into drop houses to kidnap rival traffickers for big ransoms.

San Diego County has largely escaped the worst of the violence, immigration officials said. That may be because San Diego is mainly a brief stop in the smuggling corridor leading to Los Angeles and other larger cities.

Other officials point to the multilayer, 14-mile fence built along the border between San Diego County and Tijuana. The fence and others along California's border with Mexico are credited with pushing human smuggling east to Arizona.

Houses hard to find
In North County, drop houses are predominantly stopping over points because of the immigration checkpoints at San Clemente and Temecula, agents said.

Lookouts find when checkpoints are not operating to increase their chances of passing undetected.

"Normally, San Diego is not the destination point; it's north," said Dane Bowen, assistant special agent in charge of a human trafficking unit in San Diego. "They don't need to keep the aliens in the house for long periods of time. They may be in the house a week, a day, maybe, even hours."

Bowen and other agents say they need help from the public to help find drop houses like the one in Escondido, which are by their very nature difficult to detect.

For four months, neighbors said they suspected something was wrong at the home on Cortez Avenue, but they didn't quite know what.

Sandra Elpers said she noticed cars loaded with people drive into the garage across the street and leave empty, but for the drivers. She said neighbors were upset about the people coming and going and the deteriorating appearance of the house.

"I knew something was going on," Elpers said. "People were talking about them, they were very apprehensive about them."

It took a desperate call to lead immigration authorities to Tamara Dudoit's home.

Warning signs
Worried about her husband's life, Francisca Guadarrama called San Diego police, who later called the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Human Trafficking Division.

Tom Miller, the special agent in charge of investigating the case, said he believes that the smugglers increased the fee for smuggling Guadarrama. When his wife told the smugglers she did not have the money, they threatened to kill him.

It was one of the first cases in San Diego County in which smugglers were charged under a 2006 state law that makes it easier to prosecute these crimes as human trafficking, immigration officials said. Because human trafficking is considered a more serious crime, it generally results in stiffer sentences than smuggling.

Other border states, such as Arizona where gangs have become heavily involved in smuggling, are increasingly taking steps to disrupt the smuggling operations.

"Compared to Arizona, it's not nearly the amount of violence," Bowen said. But "that part of it" ---- the number of threatening calls received by family members of smuggled immigrants ---- "is escalating," Bowen said.

The bust
Smugglers threatened to cut Martin Guadarrama into pieces and "spread his body parts all around Highway 78 in Oceanside" if she didn't pay, Francisca Guadarrama told police, according to court documents.

Police detectives asked her to lure the smugglers back to her home in the San Diego neighborhood of Barrio Logan by telling them she had the money and was ready to pay. The smugglers ---- Mateo Alvarado, 23, and Luis Camacho Ventura, 21 ---- were arrested later that night when they arrived to deliver Martin Guadarrama.

The Guadarramas could not be reached for comment at their Barrio Logan address. The couple have petitioned not to be deported, immigration officials said.

The couple also identified Juventino Rodriguez Ismerio, 23, as one of the leaders of the ring and the one who threatened to kill Martin Guadarrama in an earlier visit to the Guadarramas' home. They also identified Jonathan Aguilar Lopez, 22, as one of the drivers who came to their home.

Alvarado, Camacho, Rodriguez and Aguilar could not be reached through their attorneys. Two of them are in prison, one is on probation and one was deported to Mexico, immigration officials said.

When police searched the smugglers' car, they found an envelope with the address of the Escondido drop house. Martin Guadarrama told police that there were others being held there.

Atypical drop house
The next day, immigration agents arrived at Dudoit's home in Escondido to find eight more illegal immigrants huddled in a small room.

The doors were locked and a window was boarded up by their captors to prevent escape, immigration agents said.

Agents also found $2,400 in cash and a list of names belonging to the illegal immigrants with a tally of their smuggling fees.

Dudoit later admitted in court that she had been using the home as a drop house for the smuggling ring since January 2007.

Dudoit said she did not know about the threats to Guadarrama's life.

Video taken by immigration agents of the home shows several illegal immigrants sitting on the floor in an unfurnished room.

It shows an agent counting cash found under a bed in an unlocked safe, a handgun in one of the closets and photos of Dudoit's children on bookshelves.

Dudoit told the agents that the group of illegal immigrants in the room were the remnants of a group of about 31 people who had arrived a few days earlier.

Repeated attempts to reach her at her last known place of employment and through her attorney were unsuccessful.

In court documents, Dudoit said she took part in the ring to support her children, two of whom are described as "developmentally delayed."

According to her statement and authorities, Dudoit got into the operation through her former husband, who was also involved in smuggling.

In May, Dudoit pleaded guilty to one count of harboring illegal immigrants. She served 11 days in jail and is serving three years on probation.

For his involvement, Rodriguez was sentenced to three years in prison. Alvarado received probation and Camacho was deported.

The new state law gives immigration officials another avenue to prosecute human traffickers, said Deputy District Attorney Gretchen Means. It's one more tool available to law enforcement to fight these crimes, she said.

"These types of cases will see more light of day," Means said.

Taking risks
About two weeks after agents raided the Escondido drop house, a member of the smuggling ring was caught after leading multiple law enforcement agencies on a high-speed chase that ended in fiery crash in Ramona.

On May 3, the Border Patrol chased a 2000 black Pontiac Bonneville they suspected was carrying illegal immigrants near Jamul, according to court documents. During the pursuit, the car sped upward of 100 mph.

At the intersection of Highway 67 and Dye Road in Ramona, sheriff's deputies set a spike strip to deflate the car's tires. But the car continued speeding until it struck the back of an SUV.

The smugglers and some of the illegal immigrants fled on foot, leaving the car on fire with several other people inside. After a foot chase, an 18-year-old smuggler was arrested.

Aguilar, who was involved in the group that ran the Escondido drop house, was later identified as the driver of the Bonneville. He was arrested while hiding in the stock room of a Rubio's Restaurant at 1664 Main St. in Ramona.

While extinguishing the engine fire on the Bonneville, officers heard screaming and banging coming from inside the car's trunk. Two men were found inside. One had a large cut to his head and the other had minor injuries, according to an arrest report.

A growing concern
In the chase that led to Aguilar's arrest, U.S. immigration officials see an example of a troubling brazenness on the part of the smugglers.

Agents say that even though human smugglers are less likely to be prosecuted than drug smugglers, they are nevertheless willing to endanger people's lives by running because their cargo is so valuable.

Most human smugglers, who are often caught at the border, are simply returned to Mexico. Many claim it was their first time participating in the crime, agents said.

There are many who use the "pobrecito" excuse, or the "poor me" excuse, said John P. Mulvey, a supervisor with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in San Diego. But smugglers show little concern for the well being of illegal immigrants or their lives, officials said.

Immigration officials said the binational nature of smuggling makes it difficult to disrupt. Typically, the top ring leaders operate out of Mexico, largely out of the reach of U.S. law enforcement.

On the U.S. side of the border, the smugglers tend to be drivers who deliver the illegal immigrants to their destination, the drop house operators and the money collectors, officials said.

In recent months, law enforcement officials have successfully prosecuted several smuggling rings operating in San Diego County.

A woman pleaded guilty last month to various charges resulting from her involvement in a smuggling ring. Gloria Leon Aldana forced people to work for her to pay off the smuggling fees and threatened to turn the illegal immigrants over to authorities for deportation if they refused to work, according to court documents.

In September, two women were sentenced in federal court for their roles in a North County-based smuggling operation that transported illegal immigrants throughout Southern California.

U.S. District Court Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz said at the time that the more than $400,000 in cash the government seized in the case made it one of the larger immigrant smuggling cases he has seen in 21 years on the bench.

"We are concerned about an escalating level in violence, because it's the people that end up being the victims of these organizations," said Mike Unzueta, special agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego.

The neighborhood at the 1800 block of Cortez Avenue appears to have returned to normal. The house across the street is quiet once again, said Elpers, the neighbor who watched her strange neighbors as she tended her flower garden.

Elpers said she was cautious and believed that something illegal was happening in the home. But human smuggling was something she didn't imagine happening in the neighborhood, she said.

"We thought they were dealing drugs," she said.

Contact staff writer Edward Sifuentes at (760) 740-3511 or esifuentes@nctimes.com.

Magnitude
The U.S. State Department estimates that about 800,000 people are trafficked around the world each year. Many of them are lured from their homes with the false hopes of well-paying jobs, but instead are forced into prostitution, domestic servitude or other types of labor.

Human trafficking or smuggling?
Human trafficking is defined as transporting, recruiting or harboring a person for labor, servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery through force, fraud or coercion.

Human smuggling is defined as bringing people into the country in violation of immigration laws, including transporting and harboring illegal immigrants in the United States.

Trafficking indicators
Some of the things to watch for: victims are forced into prostitution, families threatened with harm, documents taken away, freedom of movement is denied; food, water, sleep or medical care are withheld.

How to report it
(866) 347-2423 or www.ice.gov.

---- From U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02 ... 2_1_08.txt