Thread: Illegal crossers now buying 'secure' cards

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/dailyPublished: 10.16.2005

Illegal crossers now buying 'secure' cards
By Michael Marizco
ARIZONA DAILY STAR star/98036.php

NOGALES, Ariz. - The Mexican man was nervous when he walked up clutching another man's visa. It was an amateur job; his face didn't match the visa's photo.

Within two hours, the impostor, Walter Preciado Cordova, 25, would be deported back to Mexico, his intentions vague after he was caught trying to get into the United States with another man's laser visa.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspectors at the ports of entry see such impostors every day: migrants trying to sneak into this country using the very tools meant to protect against illegal entry through the ports - the vaunted U.S. laser visas that are supposed to offer the highest level of security available in the digital age.

To fight that trend, the U.S. State Department is starting a new tracking system Monday to dissuade people from selling off their laser visas - or to at least encourage them to hold on to them more carefully.

The visas are counterfeit-proof and in 2004, Congress appropriated $11 million to install scanners at all U.S. ports to read the data embedded on the cards.

But over the years, smugglers and spotters have noticed that U.S. Customs inspectors don't always scan the laser visa cards, instead relying on their instincts about border-crossers, to speed up the entry process. Last Wednesday, for example, the biometric scanner at the Nogales port of entry wasn't working at all.

As a result, the illicit laser visa scam is booming in towns like Nogales, Sonora. Hundreds are reported lost or stolen every year, and hundreds more are seized as impostors try to cross through the ports of entry.

U.S. border officials have tracked thousands of stolen laser visas, some up for sale, available to migrants who want to avoid the desert for prices ranging from $50 to $2,000.

Preciado, from Colima, Mexico, climbed off the bus in Nogales, Sonora, with a plan to cross illegally into Arizona through the desert.

He was approached by a man at the bus station who stopped him with an offer.

For $1,000, he would sell Preciado another man's laser visa to cross through the port of entry instead of hiking the brutal Arizona desert, where more than 240 illegal border-crossers are known to have died last fiscal year.

Preciado decided to take his chances with the visa.

With a legitimate visa to show the inspector, he'd be in Phoenix days earlier than he planned and less visible to immigration agents, he said.

The $1,000 Preciado paid was a bargain, he said.

"They're charging $1,500 to walk through the desert," he told inspectors who processed him for a quick deportation back to Mexico last Wednesday.

Theft is only one way visas end up on the streets. Border residents also sell their visas and claim them stolen.

It's a tough accusation to prove, but "we suspect that it happens," said Benjamin Ousley, the consular section chief for the U.S. Consulate in Nogales, Sonora.

"I believe that a lot of people are victims of crime, too, so if their story holds together, if it's an accurate and consistent narrative, we'll allow them another visa," he added.

Officials at the Nogales port of entry seized 1,745 laser visas from impostors last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, said Jesus Jerez, chief of passenger operations at the downtown Nogales port. The year before that, more than 2,300 were seized, he said.

In one case, a Nogales, Sonora, woman was sentenced last February to 15 months in prison for smuggling a 4-year-old boy using a laser visa. Maria Dolores Garnica Gonzalez was arrested after an inspector didn't buy her story that she was baby-sitting the boy. Later, she admitted she was smuggling him to his parents for $90.

Starting tomorrow, consular offices will no longer issue replacement laser visas, Ousley said.

Passport will have sticker visa

Instead, people who report their missing visas to consular officials for a replacement will be issued a sticker visa to place inside their passport. The sticker will be annotated with a stamp denoting the missing laser visa as lost or stolen.

The hope is that inspectors at the ports of entry will notice the "lost/stolen" annotation and ask more questions of the person seeking entry into the United States, Ousley said.

"You're walking up to the inspector holding a red flag," he said.

The new tracking system comes at a time of when many in the United States are clamoring to close down the U.S.-Mexican border with walls and fences.

Members of Congress have discussed different plans for walling off the border, and newspaper editorials are heavily discussing the issue.

An initiative called "We Need a Fence" promotes placing a high-tech fence along the border, and its organizers hope fence legislation will be introduced soon.

But new ways for illegal crossers to get through the border are always in the offing.

The laser visa was supposed to stop one way: impostors using the old border crossing card that carried no biometric information. The meticulous could carefully cut out one person's mugshot on those cards and replace it with another, said Richard Rivera, a Customs officer who now instructs inspectors on how to tell a counterfeit visa or spot an impostor.

He holds up three temporary border-crossing cards to show one method. On each dog-eared card, the name was the same, but the photo was different.

The laser cards were designed to stay ahead of fraud, Ousley said. "But criminal organizations are pretty nimble and react quickly."

Inspectors are supposed to use a biometric reader to call up the information on the back of the laser visa, he said.

But mainly they rely on "gut instinct," watching for stories that don't quite hold together, a lack of confidence when the person approaches the port inspector or just plain nervousness, Rivera said.

U.S. citizens are different -they're always nervous when they approach a port inspector, Jerez observed.

That instinct is a good thing, too - last Wednesday, when the biometric reader at the downtown port of entry wasn't working, inspectors had to rely on instincts. The scanner is mainly used by new inspectors, Jerez said.

Officials in Washington acknowledge that not every card is scanned, saying that doing so would cause tremendous back-ups at the ports of entry, said Kelly Klundt, spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection.

Sanctions for losing visa

People who lose their visas can pay a stiff price.

They're required to sit through an interview where U.S. consular officials try to trip them up with questions about how they lost their visa. In the end, an interviewer can simply deny issuing the visa if the story isn't straight.

In extreme cases, such as where somebody lost their visa once before and gives a doubtful story about what happened to the latest one, the penalty is having their visa application refused until they're 90 years old, Ousley said.

One way to counter the consular's denial is to create a paper trail for themselves, said Joel Bojorquez, a popular news anchor for Radio Xeny, 105.01 FM in Nogales, Sonora.

The radio station operates a "lost and found" ad service for Nogales, Sonora, residents to begin documenting their missing laser visa.

He reads the short ads on the air after the evening news broadcasts and gives people a receipt acknowledging that they took out the ad.

That receipt is then taken back to the consul office, he said.

While people who lose their visas face strong scrutiny, impostors are not prosecuted until they've tried to get across the border two or three times, Jerez said.

Arresting everybody who tries to get in with another person's visa would overwhelm the prison system, Jerez said.

So, using the same rules that the U.S. Border Patrol uses, those caught on their first time are simply documented, checked for criminal backgrounds and released.

Critics say the new passport sticker system is as flawed as the initial scanner system put in place last year.

Those with stickers will be checked, but the people who end up with their lost laser visas are still only subject to those "gut instincts," said Jessica Vaughan, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies.

"It doesn't do much good to flag the good documents," she said. "This is just another instance where our immigration policies fall on people who follow the rules. It doesn't apply to people who are evading them."

Visa details

â—? Laser visas hold a person's fingerprint and mugshot on one side; a laser-read card on the back has the same information plus another print. In place at the Mexico border since 1998, the visas permit access to the United States to Mexican border residents who travel up into the border zone on a frequent basis. In Southern Arizona, the visas allow 30 days' access and travel of 75 miles up to Tucson.


Other fraud techniques used

â—? Using fraudulent laser visas is only one way that impostors try to get through the border, notes Jesus Jerez, an official at the downtown Nogales port of entry.

Impostor passports from all over the world, birth certificates, fake Arizona driver's licenses whose font doesn't quite match what's in your wallet - those are also used.

In July 2004, Customs inspectors found a notary public stamp from Cochise County in one person's luggage.

The stamp is used to notarize letters of permission for parents to allow another adult to pass their child back into the United States, Jerez said.

A stamp like that one would be a handy tool for a smuggler to sneak children in, he said.

Something else that probably exists is one stop shopping. A coyote offering customers fake Social Security and Immigration documentation.