Four people jailed for smuggling immigrants

By JASON BUCH
LAREDO MORNING TIMES
Published: Friday, June 26, 2009 7:38 AM CDT

A federal judge has sentenced four people to prison terms for smuggling immigrants and forcibly detaining at least one of their charges.

Gerardo Rafael Perez, 30, an undocumented immigrant himself, received the largest sentence, 81/2 years in prison, for operating a stash house for immigrants in the 6400 block of Stapelia Street, at the edge of Laredo city limits near U.S. 59.

Police on Jan. 22 responded to a call that an undocumented immigrant was being held against his will at Perez's stash house, according to court documents.

There they found four immigrants who had been smuggled into the U.S. and were waiting to go farther north, including one who had been held there while the smugglers-turned-captors extorted money from him, according to the documents.

Jose Alfredo Rodriguez Gomez told federal agents who assisted Laredo police that his family had paid $3,000 to have him smuggled into the U.S.

Once he got to the stash house on Stapelia, the coyotes demanded $1,000 more and threatened him, according to court documents.

When Rodriguez Gomez tried to look out a window, one of the smugglers, Salvador Uvalle Malverde, 28, banged his head against the window, according to the documents.

Perez threatened to kill Rodriguez Gomez during a ransom call, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez on Wednesday sentenced Uvalle Malverde to spend two years in prison. Co-defendants Victor Javier Roque Torres, 40, and Arturo Perez Lopez, 18, received sentences of 20 and 18 months, respectively.

Gerardo Rafael Perez's attorney, Luis Antonio Figueroa, said Alvarez overruled at sentencing objections that Perez was not involved in the extortion and that claims he had housed six immigrants several days before were unsubstantiated.

Perez received an increased sentence because he had two prior immigrant smuggling convictions as well, Figueroa said.

Smugglers moving significant amounts of drugs get 8-9 year prison sentences, he said after the sentencing.

"I don't think the punishment fits the crime," Figueroa said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which worked with Laredo police and Border Patrol on the case, occasionally sees smugglers detaining immigrants and extorting money from them along the border, but it

happens more often as the immigrants move north said Jerry Robinette, ICE special agent-in-charge of the San Antonio office.

Each leg of the journey tends to be handled by a different group of smugglers, one to bring the immigrants across, one to house them once they're across and one to get them past Border Patrol checkpoints, Robinette said.

When the immigrants get near their final destination, smugglers are more likely to extort money from them, he said.

More often than not, the immigrants just pay off their captors and move on, Robinette said.

"We take these cases very seriously," he said.

"We respond very aggressively to not just facilitate release of aliens, but to come back with a criminal case against these individuals so they know the consequences to these crimes.

They're not just perpetrated against someone everyone's forgotten."

In an unrelated ICE case in San Antonio, a judge sentenced Brent Andrew Stephens to five years in prison for a sex trafficking scheme with ties to the border.

Stephens was part of a ring that lured young women from Nuevo Laredo to San Antonio and forced them into the sex trade, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

(Jason Buch may be reached at 728-2547 or jbuch@lmtonline.com)

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