http://sun.yumasun.com/artman/publish/a ... _18790.php

Local News
Suspected smuggler freed when witnesses deported
BY JAMES GILBERT
Aug 29, 2005

The first man arrested in Yuma under a new state law against human trafficking will not be prosecuted because the illegal aliens he allegedly smuggled were deported before they could testify against him.

Anthony Zalapa, 22, of Los Angeles, was facing eight counts of human smuggling, a newly-enacted criminal violation in Arizona, but was advised by Yuma Justice of the Peace David Cooper that the county attorney's office declined to file any charges against him.

"It's not that we don't want to prosecute this case, because we do, it's that we can't because all the witnesses are gone now," said Roger Nelson, chief criminal prosecutor for the Yuma County Attorney's Office. "If we are going to prosecute the cases, we need the witnesses to do it."

The apparent lack of coordination between Yuma police, county prosecutors and the U.S. Border Patrol occurred when police arrested Zalapa late Wednesday night while the Border Patrol took custody of the aliens he was allegedly smuggling.

Nelson said a problem he sees with the new human smuggling law is that unless federal and state authorities work out some type of arrangement to detain the witnesses, his office will never be able to prosecute the cases.

"That is why it is better for the federal agency to prosecute these type of cases," Nelson said. "Another problem is the cost associated with (detaining alien witnesses) and who is going to pay for it."

Nelson said by the time his office had received the case from police, the witnesses (the illegal aliens being smuggled) had already been deported to Mexico.

Michael Gramley, spokesman for U.S. Border Patrol's Yuma sector, confirmed that the six illegal aliens arrested with Zalapa were taken into custody by the patrol, but have since been deported.

"It is my understanding that all of the people arrested with Zalapa were turned over to us after they were determined to be Mexican nationals, without valid immigration documents, the same day they were arrested," Gramley said. "Typically if they don't have criminal convictions or prior deportations, they are returned voluntarily to Mexico."

Gramley said while the Border Patrol will assist state agencies in the prosecution of human smuggling cases, the agency is only allowed to detain illegal aliens as witnesses for federally-prosecuted cases â€â€