Human-smuggling ring broken up by investigators

21 arrested; 10,000 illegal aliens were moved through Valley, task force says

by Sean Holstege - Dec. 13, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Investigators have broken up a Phoenix smuggling ring that transported as many as 10,000 illegal aliens in two years around the country, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard announced Friday.

Goddard called the network "the Greyhound bus lines of human smuggling" because the smugglers hauled immigrants in as many as 10 vans from Phoenix-area drophouses to 22 other states.

They did business mostly in cash, collecting hundreds of dollars for each immigrant from employers and relatives in other states on arrival and, after taking a cut, smuggling payments to cartels across the border in Mexico, authorities said.

Driving bags full of cash south across the border has become a key smugglers' tactic to skirt an Arizona crackdown on wire-transfer payments.

Authorities arrested 21 suspects, including a person suspected of being a local kingpin. Thirty-five have been indicted by a state grand jury, and investigators are seeking dozens more. All but two of the suspects identified Friday were in the country illegally, prosecutors said.

The grand jury charged the suspects with conspiracy, money laundering and participating in an illegal syndicate.

The arrests culminated a seven-month investigation involving state prosecutors, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol, state Department of Public Safety and Phoenix Police Department.

Detectives on the team described the arrest as a death blow to a network they say was led by Rosalio Palacios-Alfaro, 26, an illegal immigrant from Mexico.

The so-called Operation En Fuego probe began in May when Phoenix police responded to a south Phoenix drophouse where one smuggling gang had raided another.

Police later found the charred body of one smuggler in a dumpster and another still alive who had been bound and gagged and stuffed into a closet for five days.

Evidence led to the transportation ring led by Palacios-Alfaro, investigators said. Significant follow-up investigations remain, they added.

In addition to rounding up more suspects and fugitives, detectives are trying to establish which Mexican cartel figures the Phoenix cell worked for.

Cash payments were often made in other states by would-be employers, not relatives, which is more typical. ICE agents want to know if these employers knowingly tried to hire undocumented workers.

Those employers and some relatives typically paid $2500 for the transport of each immigrant. They would wire $1,800 to cartels in Mexico, where the journey started, and pay $700 in cash to the Phoenix-based ring, which contracted with the cartels.

Detectives said the drivers took $100 per immigrant, and Palacios-Alfaro another $400. That left $200 for the smuggling cartels, slipped into Mexico in bulk cash, Goddard said.

A van would leave from one of five Valley drophouses with up to 15 illegal immigrants. The network also operated its own auto-repair shop for the vans, officials said.

Investigators seized $39,000 during this week's arrests but estimate that Palacios-Alfaro's network earned up to $7 million total.

A state task force has seized $17 million in suspected payments wired from relatives of illegal immigrants in other states to Phoenix coyotes. After the court-approved forfeitures, cartels started wiring money to Western Union outlets in northern Sonora. In two weeks, the Arizona Supreme Court is scheduled to review the legality of Arizona investigators tracking and seizing suspected coyote payments in Mexico.

"This organization is pretty typical of the ones that operate here," said Troy Henley, ICE deputy special agent-in-charge.

In the past two years, ICE has dismantled about 10 smuggling organizations, although Operation En Fuego netted far more individual indictments than usual.

Investigators explained how smugglers would bundle 10 to 15 immigrants in their vans and make four to six long-distance trips every week. Drivers took back roads past Globe and Monument Valley to avoid detection on the interstate system.

During at least one trip, a van broke down in the Utah desert. The driver stashed the broken van, with the immigrants locked inside without food or water, until a replacement van arrived 15 hours later.

During this week's arrests, four vans were on the road.

One was pulled over in Arizona and another in Pennsylvania. Police are looking for two more vans.

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