Pilot caught ferrying illegals
By Liz Mineo / Daily News Staff
Tuesday, May 24, 2005

FRAMINGHAM -- A Framingham man who was piloting a Cessna aircraft carrying five illegal immigrants was arrested last week after making an emergency landing at a military base in New Mexico.

Charles Bueno, a 28-year-old Brazilian pilot who is also an illegal alien, was arrested the afternoon of May 16 and faces alien smuggling charges. His five passengers, all from Brazil, were also arrested.

In the records of the Civil Aviation Registry, Bueno is registered as the owner of the single-engine 1979 Cessna P210N he landed at the New Mexico military base.



Bueno's plane registration lists an address on Edmands Road Apartments, and his pilot license lists an address on Union Avenue. Calls to Bueno's fiancee in Framingham were not returned.

According to Letty Zamarripa, spokeswoman with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in El Paso, Texas, Bueno, whose visitor's visa expired in 1998, also faces deportation.

Bueno, who could face up to 10 years in prison, is awaiting trial in a detention facility in Dona Ana, New Mexico. The other five passengers, a 32-year-old man, a 20-year-old woman, and 12-year-old twin sisters accompanied by their mother, did not have entry visas, but they are not incarcerated because they are going to be material witnesses in the case, Zamarripa said. The spokeswoman said they are willing to cooperate and are staying in this country.

Immigration officials still do not know if Bueno has flown illegal immigrants across the country. What they know is that Bueno took off from Fullerton Municipal Airport in Orange County, Calif., the morning of May 16 en route to Atlanta and then Boston.

"His intention was to go back to Boston," Zamarripa said.

Instead, Bueno was forced to make an emergency landing at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico because his plane was running out of fuel. He had been flying more than six hours since taking off from Fullerton.

Civilian aircraft are allowed to land at military airports only in cases of emergency. According to Cannon Air Force Base spokeswoman Tech. Sgt. Karen Wickire-Krause, the landing of the Cessna mobilized a team from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. After the initial investigation, they turned the pilot and his passengers over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

"There were some inconsistencies between the pilot's version and the documentation some passengers had," she said. "There was great suspicion. We called the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

Transporting illegal immigrants in small aircraft is not common, said Zamarripa. But what happened in New Mexico highlights security gaps in small airports across the country.

There are 19,000 airports in the country, and the majority are small airports, many of which lack managers or employees. With a legal pilot's license, a registered aircraft, and a flight plan, a person can take off from any municipal airport, where nobody checks the immigration status of passengers or pilots.

"We don't have the authority to do that," said Rod Propst, Fullerton Municipal Airport manager, from where Bueno took off. "Do local police in our towns stop nine-passenger vans because they think they may be illegal aliens? Of course not."

According to Propst, Bueno followed all the airport regulations and they did not see any indication of illegal activities. In fact, he said, had Bueno landed in a civilian airport, it is very likely he would not have encountered any problems.

"If he had landed in a civilian airfield, he would have gotten gas, refueled, and continued with his flight," he said. "And this story wouldn't have been known."

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