http://www.orovillemr.com/news/bayarea/ci_5156350

February 4, 2007
SUNDAY

Police able to thwart smuggler's extortion
Victim was smuggled into Oakland, but was kidnapped when husband refused higher price

By Harry Harris and Erik N. Nelson,, STAFF WRITERS
Article Launched: 02/04/2007 02:42:59 AM PST

Three people who smuggled a Guatemalan teenager into Oakland to join her husband are being sought after they abducted the woman when her husband refused to pay a higher fee than negotiated, police said Saturday.

The 17-year-old woman and another woman also smuggled into the United States were found Friday night at a Fairfield motel, scared but otherwise unharmed.

Authorities at first thought the case was one of human trafficking.

But Oakland police Officer Jim Beere, with the Vice and Child Exploitation Unit, said Saturday that was not the case. "She was not brought here to work as a prostitute or in forced labor, but to reunite with her husband."

Sgt. Tom Hogenmiller said the woman's husband had paid the smugglers — whom someone had referred him to — to bring her and their 1-year-old son to Oakland. They ap- parently had begun traveling from Guatemala several days earlier.

Beere said the intial fee was about $2,000 and another

$2,000 was wired by the husband to a bank in Mexico after he was told they had crossed the border. The suspects — two men and a woman — are believed to be Mexican nationals, police said.

A rendezvous was set for Friday afternoon at a drug store parking
lot in the Fruitvale district.

Beere said the husband was supposed to pay the smugglers another $1,700 upon delivery, but they raised the price to $3,700 at the parking lot meeting.

They gave him his son, but said he would never see his wife alive again if he did not pay the higher fee, police said.

The husband had gone to the meeting with his wife's brother, who began breaking windows out of the suspects' Infiniti to try and forcibly remove her, Hogenmiller said.

The suspects then drove off, and police and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency officials were called.

The suspects made several cell phone calls to the husband, demanding he wire the $3,700, plus an additonal sum for the cost of the broken windows, to Mexico for his wife's release, Beere said.

But the husband refused.

Investigators were able to trace the suspects to a Fairfield EZ8 Motel on North Texas Boulevard and notified Fairfield police about 6 p.m. Friday.

Fairfield police found the suspects' car but no sign of them. The 17-year-old wife was found in a motel room along with another woman also smuggled from Guatemala, police said.

Beere said apparently the suspects had gone to get something to eat at a nearby restuarant, leaving the women alone in the motel room, and fled on foot when they saw police.

The manager of the motel said he saw the smuggling suspects flee from the motel while Fairfield Police were staking out their room.

"The suspects walked away calmly. They were gone by the time Oakland (police) got there," said manager Greg Lorence. He said he alerted officers at the scene, but "Fairfield Police didn't try to detain them."

Asked if this was accurate, Fairfield Police Lt. Gary Rodgers said, "We never had any contact or information" about suspects nearby.

Oakland police said the women did not flee their unguarded motel room because they "were scared and did not know the area."

Larisa Casillas, director of the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition in Oakland, said it's no surprise that smuggled immigrants would fear what might lay outside of their motel door.

"They are really fearful of the unknown, and they aren't really sure of where they are," she said, "and we don't know what they're fleeing from."

In addition, Central American immigrants often "have very poor experiences with law enforcement in their own countries," Casillas said, and so might have been wary of what awaited them.

"This is a very good illustration of how our current immigration system and particularly our policy of enforcement at the border isn't working."

When the United States makes immigration more difficult, such as building walls or failing to keep up with a backlog of applications to unite familities, people take even greater risks to get in, Casillas said.

Beere said it is believed the suspects are from the Arizona area and are known to federal authorities.

Lorence, who worked as a motel manager in Arizona, said police there often find smugglers holding immigrants hostage in motels.

"You read about it in the newspaper in Phoenix and Tucson all the time," he said.