Thread: Octogenarian to plead guilty to migrant smuggling

Octogenarian to plead guilty to migrant smuggling
Posted: Aug 19, 2011 4:34 AM EDT
By ELLIOT SPAGAT
Associated Press

SAN DIEGO (AP) - An attorney for an octogenarian immigrant smuggler says his client has agreed to plead guilty in San Diego to charges that she smuggled illegal immigrants.

Authorties say Felicitas Gurrola headed an organization that led up to 80 people month through the San Ysidro border crossing connecting San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, and eventually to the Los Angeles.

Attorney Thomas Matthews said Wednesday that Felicitas Gurrola de Mason has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to bring in illegal aliens for financial gain. A federal complaint in April says she was 84 years old at the time.

http://www.ktvn.com/story/15295340/octo ... -smuggling

Elderly woman pleads guilty to running human smuggling ring

Kristina Davis
August 19, 2011

SAN DIEGO — An 84-year-old woman pleaded guilty Friday to heading a family-run human-smuggling ring that would use fake documents to get as many as 80 immigrants a month across the Mexican border.

The admission marks the end of an apparent decades-long career for Felicitas Gurrola, an atypical smuggler in a business dominated by increasingly violent organized crime groups headed by men.

In one wiretapped conversation, Gurrola was heard saying she’d been smuggling immigrants for “over 40 years,â€