Posted on 08/01/2004 8:22:30 PM PDT by NewRomeTacitus
PHOENIX -- A dark gray 2003 Dodge Ram truck sits backed up in the shaded space of a motel parking lot, isolated from other vehicles.
The four-door, half-ton pickup can barely fit between the white lines, and is jacked up on tires that look as though they were made for a semi. A yellow smiley face stares blankly from a blue sign where the license plate should be.
"It's probably stolen," says Detective Scott Reutter.
Reutter, a Department of Public Safety officer working with the Arizona Vehicle Theft Task Force, said expensive vehicles found parked in isolated spaces outside shabby motels often turn out to be stolen. And many of those vehicles are used to help carry out one of the most prevalent, violent crimes in Arizona and the Southwest: illegal immigrant smuggling.
Smugglers have been stealing vehicles to move drugs for years. But in the past year or so authorities have noticed that stolen vehicles are being used more frequently for smuggling human cargo, a crime that has become just as lucrative as drug trafficking.
"A light bulb went off, and smugglers said, 'Hey, we can transport people too,"' said Sgt. Pete Fenton, a vehicle theft investigator with the Phoenix Police Department.
Arizona became the busiest illegal crossing point on the Mexican border in recent years after crackdowns in Texas and California during the 1990s pushed more migrants toward this state.
The Border Patrol now apprehends hundreds of thousands of immigrants in Arizona every year. The shift in migrant traffic has contributed to a rise in smuggling and other crimes committed by immigrant smugglers, who are also known as coyotes.
Smuggling-related theft likely is contributing to Arizona's high auto-theft rate as reported by the National Crime Information Center.
According to the center, about 50,000 vehicles were stolen statewide in 2002, the most recent year for which statistics are available. That same year, the center also ranked the Phoenix metropolitan area as having the highest auto theft rate in the nation at 1,024 vehicles stolen per 100,000 people.
At the time, the center reported the top two stolen vehicles in the state were Chevrolet and Ford full-size pickups. Nissan pickups placed sixth and Dodge Rams were eighth.
Coyotes target large pickup trucks and SUVs because they offer maximum space, are better equipped to travel over rough terrain and are readily available here, said Mikel Longman, executive director of the Arizona Automobile Theft Authority, which is funded by the insurance industry to fight vehicle theft and insurance fraud.
"Those vehicles are really popular here. We love our sport utility vehicles, we love our pickup trucks, and those are useful to smuggling groups," Longman said.
Coyotes use various methods to get their hands on vehicles, including paying professional thieves to steal from ordinary citizens or car dealerships, and less commonly, carjacking.
Reutter said thefts from car dealerships in the Phoenix area are carried out almost exclusively for drug and people smuggling.
First, coyotes hire thieves to gets jobs at dealerships, either as salespeople or attendants. The thieves make duplicates of keys and steal vehicles after hours.
When coyotes steal vehicles on the street, Longman said they usually look for easy targets, such as cars with keys in the ignition or unlocked doors.
Once the vehicles are near the border, smugglers strip down their interiors, ripping out seats to make room for as many people as possible. Some border areas are littered with seats discarded by coyotes.
"These smugglers are really not interested in the comfort or safety of the people they are transporting. They pile them up like Lincoln Logs," said Greg Maier, a spokesman with the Border Patrol's Tucson sector.
The Tucson sector, which covers all the Arizona-Mexico border except for an area around Yuma, never tried to track the number of stolen vehicles used for smuggling until this year.
While agents don't know how many are used for immigrant smuggling versus drug trafficking, Maier said they recovered close to 400 stolen vehicles used for smuggling-related activities between the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1 and July 29. That's more than one a day.
"We run into it pretty regularly," Maier said. "This year, we noticed that maybe we should start counting these."
There is no way to know exactly how many stolen vehicles in Arizona are used for smuggling because there is no statewide system for tracking that.
"But it's definitely a significant proportion of our auto thefts," Longman said.
Perhaps no one is more aware of that than Reutter, the DPS officer with the theft task force.
Seconds after spotting the Dodge Ram at the cheap Phoenix motel, Reutter is on the radio, calling in the vehicle identification number.
Reutter was right. It had been stolen.
Soon, a tow truck will come to haul it away, and Reutter will be back on patrol.
"We're trying to make a dent in the auto theft population," he said. "But as good as we do, it just seems like we're putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound."
National Insurance Crime Bureau: http://www.nicb.org
Arizona Automobile Theft Authority: http://www.aata.state.az.us
SAY IT AIN'T SO!!!!!!!!
LOL!!! hehehehe well I'm watching Surreal Life so can I get a sarcasm excuse note?
Gee, smugglers must be just catching up in Arizona.
Smugglers began having specialists steal cars from them about 15 years ago here in California. Border towns, like San Ysidro and Chula Vista were hit hard.It cuts down the cost of overhead. If the Coyote is caught with a load--no loss. If they use someone's "beater" car, and they get stopped, someone has lost a car. Border Patrol auctions them off.
Smugglers began having specialists steal cars from them about 15 years ago here in California.
LOL My first reaction was: DUH It's been going on for years and they're just catching on?
Yes --- along the border, although they know where the cars are going and who is stealing them, nothing gets done about the stolen car problem.
No, not really. They are just now talking about it as we are all now used to paying the higher insurance rates.
Just another benefit of respectfully saluting the arrival of out poor honest hardworking fruit and vegetable picking economic saviour's from the south.
< /pukingsarcasim >
(#12 is new, #3/4 are revised)
(COPY AND DISTRIBUTE WIDELY. Revise and extend as you see fit. Start a movement, print a petition, start a political party, confront your legislators, write letters, post posters, drop leaflets. Demand, demand, demand…)
19 POINT ACTION PLAN: Border Violators
1) Close all US borders to illegal entry forthwith by any and all means possible, including military presence.
2) Maintain legitimate immigration levels at modest annual level with requirements that immigrants be employable or sufficiently wealthy for self-support if they do not intend to work, proficient in basic English and willing to be assimilated into American culture and language. All applicants shall provide prints, photos and DNA samples.
3) Legal immigration shall be awarded only to those of Christian and Jewish faith, wherein all countries are given equal status in the immigration lottery, without regards to color or economic plight of originating nation. Christians and Jews from muslim countries fleeing religious persecution shall receive preferential and accelerated immigration status.
4) Individuals of Islamic faith (muslims) from any country shall be denied immigration privileges or entry into the US.
5) Detain all border violators, taking photos, prints and DNA samples of said violator while at the same time, checking for out standing warrants. If no warrants are outstanding, return border violators to home country within 20 days via commercial airline and submit cost of such action, including processing and housing costs for said violator, to country of origin. If costs are not paid within 30 days, reduce any and all aid to said country by a like amount.
6) Should any country from which a border violator originates not currently receive any aid from the US, the Justice Department shall be authorized to seize or secure liens on assets owned, managed or registered to that country to the full extent of the obligation.
7) Establish new Guest Worker Visa (GWV) category, renewable every six (6) months, for unskilled labor positions wherein all applicants shall provide prints, photos and DNA samples. Work permitted of such applicants shall be limited to one of several categories, including childcare, lawn/gardening, restaurant staff, cleaning, and the like. Families of GWV workers are not permitted to enter US, nor will the birth of a child in the U.S. to one of GWV status confer citizenship to either parent or child.
8) Any violation of civil or criminal laws shall result in the forfeiture of the GWV and immediate return to originating country.
9) GWV holders shall be prohibited from claiming unemployment benefits, welfare support or free medical service.
10) The originating country of all GWV holders shall be responsible for any loss caused by their citizens, including emergency medical claims and claims resulting from illegal acts committed while in the US.
11) Companies that hire GWV holders shall submit to the Immigration Dept the name and GWV number of that individual, along with a description of employment tasks. Companies that fail to report employment of GWV workers, or hire border violators, shall be subject to fines and penalties.
12) GWV workers shall not receive unemployment compensation but shall be subject to an alternate tax equivalent to the current unemployment tax rate, which shall be withheld and be applied to border patrol activities. GWV workers shall be paid with check, having income tax withheld.
13) Border violators, or any non-citizen not possessing a valid visa, detained by local police for any reason shall be turned over to border control officials for immediate deportation action, except if they face criminal charges in other jurisdictions.
14) Border violators and GWV workers shall be prohibited from voting in local, state and federal elections.
15) Border Violators shall NOT be afforded the rights enjoyed by American citizens, as guaranteed under the constitution.
16) Public education (at institutions supported by taxpayer dollars) at any level (pre-school, kindergarten through the university level,) shall NOT be available to Border Violators (or children of Border Violators) and schools that enroll such individuals shall be subject to penalties.
17) Foreign Students (F/S) (individuals admitted to the U.S. for the purpose of attending any educational facility,) private institution or public (i.e. supported by taxpayer dollars,) must have valid student visas, such visas being in force only if the F/S attends school full-time. F/S shall be required to pay tuition, housing and related costs such that all their educational costs are fully reimbursed to the institution attended. The originating country shall pay for any and all loss caused by students while on U.S. soil.
18) Border Violators seeking emergency medical treatment shall provide pictures, fingerprints and DNA samples along with country of origin, and shall be treated then incarcerated until information provided can be verified. Originating country shall bear the costs of medical treatment and confinement.
19) Children born in the U.S. to border violators, illegal aliens or of foreign nationals in the U.S. for any reason (including temporary visitor, school or work visas,) shall not be eligible for citizenship as circumstances of birth, nor shall the parents or parent’s family members (relatives) be conferred U.S. citizenship as a result of such births.
20) (developing)
They will make great democrat voters -- the ends justifies the means.
Over the past 15 years we've had TWO cars disappear, never to be seen again...
I wonder what the record for # of criminal invaders crammed into a Suburban is?
Anyone on the highways out west notices these vehicles with VERY dark window film so nothing inside is visible outside.
When I was a military brat, the Federal government always paid the local school districts for each base kid that attended the local schools, as compensation for the cost and lack of property tax to cover their schooling.
The school distrcts throughout the Border States and now, elsewhere, are not compensated in any way proportionally for the costs of schooling when immigrant families are crammed in overcrowded housing.
That's the sheer lunacy of it. Republicans, by allowing the continuing invasion of eventually Democrat voters, are committing slow-motion suicide as a political party. Even if they developed backbone at this point their future would still be in doubt. Or am I missing some magical solution they've been withholding from us?
Well, actually, there is a "magical" solution. That being to ammend the constitution to deny voting privlidges to those on public support systems (i.e. welfare.) This would gut the bulk of the democrat voting base. While a constitutional ammendment would be sweet, it will take some time. At the same time, we have to fight each and every election on the wedge issues. We're going to lose the urban areas, but, if we win enough congressmen to have our way in the Senate and the House, we can make things happen much sooner. Also, we must get the RINOs in line -- as they think THEY are way too important.
PS, I never said it was going to be easy. The prize: Our country back. The outcome of failure: We're all going to be under islamic law. So, do we debate with the leftist in this country over bull S*H*I*T, or do we exercise our political mussle?
I say, lets have a "CONSERVATISM ON STEROIDS" attitude !!!
BTW, New Rome. I have never said "kill them all." You must have overdosed your meds. What I said is clearly indicated in my posts.
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