Thread: Police note gang mentality in human smugglers

Police note gang mentality in human smugglers
By Gary Grado, Tribune
February 4, 2007
Five illegal immigrants, one of them bleeding from a gunshot wound to the leg, hid overnight in an Eloy olive grove. About 100 yards away, the body of David Norris Jr. was slumped over in a pickup truck. A band of armed men in camouflage attire and berets had ambushed his vehicle about 12 hours earlier and shot him dead.

The 12 illegal immigrants in the truck scattered, and seven fled the scene.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office is still trying to figure out whether the Jan. 28 ambush by men described as three whites and one Hispanic was the work of an extremist militia group or a human smuggling conflict, said detective Buddy Johnson.

One certainty is the attack involved illegal immigrants, whose presence along the “smugglers corridor” to the Valley attracts murders, extortion, kidnapping, car chases, gunfights and other mayhem that is part of the humansmuggling trade.

Small towns and cities that dot Interstate 10 are left to pick up the pieces.

“Stuff is happening every day,” said Department of Public Safety Cmdr. Dan Wells, who oversees a task force that focuses on gangs and illegal immigration.

Casa Grande, which has a growing population of about 40,000, is 11 miles north of Eloy and is seeing its share of violence associated with human smuggling.

Robert Huddleston, who has been Casa Grande’s police chief for seven of his 26 years on the force, said human smugglers used to serve as more of a guide for border crossers trekking across the desert.

“They have changed by taking on a gang-type mentality,” Huddleston said. “They’re willing to hurt a person in the process.”

In recent years, there have been an execution-style slaying tied to human smuggling in the city and several pursuits of human smugglers involving officers from the Tohono O’odham Indian Community or Border Patrol.

Casa Grande officers have had to respond to serious crashes involving cars loaded with illegal immigrants, and the city’s car theft rate has increased.

Huddleston said they have seen an increase in the thefts of heavy duty trucks, Chevrolet Suburbans and SUVs, which police believe are used for human smuggling.

“We’re seeing it,” Huddleston said. “We’re feeling it.”

The strip of highway between Casa Grande and Chandler is the territory of several “ripoff crews,” or “bajadores” as they’re known in Spanish, according to a recent Department of Homeland Security publication.

Wells said the bajadores hijack loads of illegal immigrants by posing as police officers.

The crews modify their cars so the headlights wigwag like a police car’s, and the men use portable emergency lights on the dashboard or the car’s roof, Wells said.

The crews typically work in pairs and wait on on-ramps and overpasses to look for vehicles that might be carrying a load of illegal immigrants.

They park in a way so they appear to be broken down, or they will act as if they are looking at a map or making a phone call.

Officers have approached them at times, but if they can’t find any reason to take the contact further, then the “bajadores are unmolested,” Wells said.

When the bajadores spot a potential victim, they will make a traffic stop and approach armed, usually with guns.

They will take the hijacked group to a stash house and hold the individuals for ransom — usually about $1,500 to $2,000 — which doubles their fee for crossing.

Alonzo Pena, special agent in charge of the Phoenix division of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said another hijacking tactic is to embed someone into a rival smuggler’s load.

At some point, the embedded person will tip off his partners and they will take over the group and hold them for ransom, Pena said.

“It is alarming they are going to those lengths,” Pena said. “It’s dangerous all the way around.”

Phoenix is the staging area for human smuggling before the immigrants are shipped to other parts of the country.

They still have plenty of highway left on their way out of Arizona, meaning more chances that DPS will have to respond to highway violence or a collision.

“It’s just crummy driving,” Wells said.

On Wednesday, DPS officers arrested two suspected coyotes in Flagstaff, but not until their pickup truck carrying 15 people crashed.
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=83490

Why is this getting so little attention in the news?