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Posted on Sat, Aug. 27, 2005

Migrant smugglers are costly, dangerous

BY STEVEN DUDLEY

sdudley@herald.com


CUENCA, Ecuador - The migrant-smuggling business in this part of southern Ecuador is so good that the local newspaper carries ads for the loan sharks who finance the trips.

''This is a mafia,'' Azuay provincial Gov. Paul Sánchez said of the vast network of loan sharks, drivers, boat operators, cooks and guards that slips Ecuadoreans into the United States, via Central America and Mexico.

The network is so widespread that Rosa Cuzco said she simply told some friends that she wanted to go north -- and soon afterward received a telephone call from a man offering to smuggle her.

Cuzco, who nearly died earlier this month when the boat smuggling her and 103 others capsized, drowning 93 passengers and crew, would not say how much she paid for the trip. But a fellow passenger told local media the price was $10,000 per person.

To round up the money, poor people sometime promise the smugglers, or coyotes, to work off the costs once they are in the United States, authorities say. It can take years to pay off the loans, at interest rates that can reach upwards of 10 percent per month, they add. Others mortgage their homes or their land, or sell their businesses or property. And all risk being robbed by the smugglers along the way.

''The worst part about this is that it's getting worse,'' said Blas Pachar, the head of the attorney general's special migration crimes office in Azuay province.

Pachar says that since the office was created in April 2002, he's processed well over 1,000 cases dealing with blackmail and robbery by alleged smugglers. But in the majority of the cases, he added, the plaintiff recants either because of threats or because the coyotes pay them to be quiet.

''It's difficult to prosecute these coyotes because the victims don't want to testify,'' Pachar said. The coyotes that do go to jail, he added, receive short sentences.

Rosa Cuzco said she has not told authorities who put her on the boat that sank in the Pacific earlier this month. But she has received threats nonetheless, she added, and the police have assigned a patrol to watch over her 24 hours a day.