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SMUGGLER DESCRIBES DETAILS OF HIS WORK
ASSOCIATED PRESS March 13, 2005

HOUSTON (AP) - Like the manager of a business, Abelardo Flores had to deal with his share of workplace problems, including personnel recruiting, office romances and overhead expenses.

But Flores didn't work for a Fortune 500 company or some Internet startup. His employer was a criminal organization authorities say was responsible for nation's deadliest human smuggling attempt.

Flores detailed the inner workings of the smuggling ring when he testified last week at the trial of Tyrone Williams, a Schenectady, N.Y., man he hired to transport more than 70 illegal immigrants inside a tractor-trailer.

Williams, 34, is the only one of 14 defendants in the case who could get the death penalty if convicted for his role in the deaths of 19 immigrants in the May 2003 smuggling attempt.

Federal law allows capital punishment in fatal smuggling cases. Williams is being tried on 58 counts of harboring and transporting illegal immigrants.

The trailer was abandoned at a truck stop in Victoria, about 100 miles southwest of Houston. Prosecutors say Williams ignored the immigrants' cries for help. His lawyers say he didn't realize they were dying until it was too late.

Testimony in the trial continues Monday.

Flores has pleaded guilty in the case. He described for jurors an organization similar to a corporation, with various levels each responsible for a particular task.

"It's becoming standardized. It's boiling itself down to a formula whereas before they would make up the rules as they went along," said Luis Urrea, an English professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has written about smuggling rings.

Flores, 36, described his rise through the ranks of the South Texas smuggling ring, from a driver of tractor-trailers filled with immigrants to a promotion as a recruiter of drivers.

"I had a gift for picking truck drivers," he said.

When one smuggler only paid him $50 per immigrant, Flores looked for another employer.

His severance package came in the form of a beating and a threat to not take his services elsewhere.

"It's brutal, the infighting between coyotes" or smugglers, said Urrea, who wrote "The Devil's Highway," which detailed the deaths of a group of Mexican men who tried crossing the Sonoran Desert from Mexico into the United States in 2001.

Flores ended up working for a smuggling ring run by Karla Patricia Chavez, who has also pleaded guilty in the case.

He recruited drivers for Chavez, getting a raise of $450 for each immigrant transported in the tractor-trailers. Each immigrant paid $1,800 to $2,000 to be smuggled.

While Flores spent hours at South Texas truck stops, looking for the right drivers, other members of the smuggling ring met the immigrants in Mexico, helping them cross over. Still others hid them in various "stash" houses.

"The bigger the organization is, the more complicated it is to run. This group is on the upper end of sophistication for smuggling and for profits," said Knut Johnson, a San Diego attorney who has represented defendants in immigrant smuggling cases.

Flores said he made sure the workers under him were well compensated.

He paid Fredy Giovanni Garcia-Tobar, who has been convicted in the case, up to $5,500 for helping him recruit drivers. Flores started earning up to $16,000 per load of immigrants.

Flores said he paid Garcia-Tobar extra money because he had a wife and kids.

But he chastised his employee when Garcia-Tobar began a romantic relationship with Chavez, saying it could be bad for the business.

Flores' fringe benefits for his workers also included taking them out to strip bars, sometimes spending up to $2,000 in one night.

"I made a lot of money. I wasted a lot of money. It was never about the money," he said.

Flores said it was about safely getting the immigrants to their destinations.

"I wanted those (19 immigrants) to make it," he said.

But Urrea said smugglers like Flores only care about money.

The immigrants "are just units to them. They have no regard for human beings."