Thread: Smugglers stow migrants on deserted island

Human traffickers are hiding migrants on a deserted island off the coast of San Diego, a local news station reports.

Channel 10 News traveled there with humanitarian group The Desert Angels, who leave food and water on "Smuggle Island" in the northern part of Mexico's Coronado Islands to provide sustenance for immigrants entering the United States illegally.

The group's members told the station that smugglers will leave immigrants on the island for days if they are worried about getting caught by the Coast Guard or if the weather is bad. Smugglers then can transport the immigrants into U.S. territory via small "panga" boats that cross into San Diego in the middle of the night.

Desert Angels member Rafael Hernandez told the station his group found five immigrants who were abandoned on the island without food or water.

Illegal entries into the country are down overall, according to the Department of Homeland Security, but more migrants are using boats to try to enter the U.S. by sea.

Since border control has tightened, smugglers and lone border-crossers now try more remote and treacherous crossings to avoid capture. In Arizona, hundreds of people died trying to cross into the state just last year. This past summer, so many bodies of dead would-be immigrants turned up in the desert that authorities had to use a refrigerated truck to store them all.

As Mexico's drug cartels have become more powerful, they have solidified their hold on the human smuggling market. People seeking to enter America illegally used to turn to an unorganized network of thousands of "coyotes" who would guide immigrants over the border in exchange for a fee. Now, drug cartels usher an estimated 176,000 immigrants per year into the United States. Experts say that the cartels' involvement means that these immigrants are much more vulnerable to financial exploitation or abandonment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20 ... ted-island

story posted here with more info

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-217614.html