Free Republic

Three accused people smugglers now face federal hostage-taking charges after they were caught holding Washington-bound immigrants for ransom, a Homeland Security Investigations spokesman announced Thursday. Federal investigators contend Espiridion Pablo-Madrigal, 34, Abel Donce de la Torre-Gonzalez, 32, and Luis Bretado-Aragon, 19, are accused of holding three immigrants hostage in a “drop house” in Phoenix, Ariz. A department spokesman said the kidnappers threatened to kill their hostages if the victims’ family didn’t pay. Homeland Security Investigations agents learned of the house on May 13, after a caller contacted HSI Seattle to report the kidnapping. HSI agents in Phoenix then worked around...

SIERRA VISTA— More than two dozen illegal immigrants were picked up by the U.S. Border Patrol after being discovered by a deer hunter on Friday morning. Gary Lium said he was out hunting in the mountains behind Fort Huachuca when he noticed a lot of footprints. Down the road he said he ran into a large group of people in wet clothes and tennis shoes who were obviously freezing. After Lium called them in at about 10 a.m., Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents searched the area and were able to locate about 27 men, women and children, said Brent Cagen,...

Four women are facing criminal charges after one of them allegedly received $1,500 dollars to smuggle two children and take them to Houston. U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested Lizeth De Leon, Herlinda Martinez, Janell Martinez and Juanita Martinez on Sunday.

WESLACO - Illegal entry into the United States is the only option for many who seek to escape poverty and violence, experts said. Immigrants put their money, trust and ultimately their lives in the hands of human smugglers. Some of those smugglers are not old enough to hold a driver's license. One of those smugglers is accused of crashing a van loaded with 17 illegal immigrants near Palmview. Life ended for nine of those immigrants. "These smugglers are ruthless people," Border Patrol Spokesman Henry Mendiola said. Mendiola is familiar with the carnage left behind by some of the human smugglers....

Four smuggling suspects were arrested in connection with the ransom of a 17-year-old Nicaraguan girl and a related raid last week that netted more than 80 suspected illegal immigrants, authorities said. A criminal complaint charges Luis Trejo-Onofre, 30, Jose Santos-Solorzano, 24, Jose Victor Perez-Olivas, 42, and Gumecindo Jaime-Martinez, 37, with harboring, transporting and conspiracy to harbor and transport illegal immigrants, records show. The men, all Mexican citizens, are scheduled to appear in federal court Wednesday

Federal agents recovered a teenage girl from Nicaragua who was being held by smugglers demanding additional money from her family. "She's in our custody now. She'll be interviewed and medically screened," said Greg Palmore with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A grocery store parking lot in southwest Houston was to have been the spot where Amparo Centeno would be reunited with her teenage daughter. Centeno had already paid more than $6,000 to have Hidalma, 16, brought from Nicaragua to the United States.

BROOKS COUNTY -- A search is underway for a 12-year-old El Salvadorian girl has been missing for 17 days. Officials said the girl is an illegal immigrant who was traveling with a group of other immigrants that left her behind in Brooks County. Kimberly Orellana was last seen near the Falfurrias checkpoint on August 8th. Kimberly was traveling with a group of immigrants who were smuggled into the United States and dropped off in Mcallen. Immigrant activist Livio Danna said the group was heading to Houston but left her behind after she couldn't walk anymore. Now, Danna is doing whatever...

MESA, Ariz. -- Three Mexican men face federal charges after agents busted an alleged drop house in Mesa on Wednesday. Jesus Castillo-Mejia, 47, and Genaro Guzman-Guzman, 29, appeared in federal court Thursday where they were charged with human smuggling. Marco Guzman-Guzman, 27, was charged with illegally re-entering the United States following a previous deportation order.

(CNN) -- A 6-year-old girl, detained in Arizona on suspicion of entering the United States illegally, is now at a shelter in El Paso, Texas, as authorities try to locate a relative. The girl, who told authorities she is from El Salvador, had to be moved to El Paso because there is no room in Arizona shelters for minors in her situation, said Jose Joaquin Chacon, the consul general for El Salvador in Arizona. The girl was traveling with her mother through Mexico, Chacon said, but for some unknown reason the mother apparently turned her daughter over to smugglers at...

Inside Mexico's 'illegal immigrant theme park': Incredible footage gives taste of potentially deadly trip across the U.S. border-- An incredible new video has revealed a rare glimpse of what it's like for illegal immigrants who make the potentially deadly trip across the Mexican border into the United States. The EcoAlberto theme park in El Alberto, Mexico, offers tourists the chance to experience a simulated illegal U.S. border crossing and for the first time the bizarre tourist attraction has been caught on film. Vice documentary makers took a video camera along to expose just how scary it is for the thousands...

More information has been revealed about the 115 immigrants found in an Edinburg Stash House on Wednesday. According to court records, “Welcome to Hell” is the greeting dozens of undocumented immigrants heard when they arrived into the U.S. Those same court records stated that the greeting wasn’t far from the truth. $500 a week is much Marcial Salas claimed he was making to smuggle in and hide dozens of illegal immigrants. Court documents show that Salas admitted to locking the immigrants in a stash house located down a dirt road off of University Drive in Edinburg, despite the rising heat,...

Early on the morning of March 16, Wong Tat joined a line of about 100 people waiting for the launch of the new iPad in a chilly rain outside an Apple store on the outskirts of San Francisco. When the doors opened, he was among the first to buy his quota of two iPads -- the maximum Apple Inc allows per person. Then, sporting a bright red cap for easy identification, Wong began to direct a stream of people toting their new tablets to a silver Mercedes SUV in the parking lot. After about two dozen of the neatly boxed...

McALLEN — Another reminder of why we need a secure border emerged this week, as U.S. Border Patrol officials confirmed three Afghan nationals were detained in the Rio Grande Valley - an increasing "hot zone" of cartel invasion and violence against American ranchers. Border Patrol confirmed the detentions, but would not say where or when they occurred. Enrique Mendiola, assistant chief Border Patrol agent for the Rio Grande Valley sector, said that human smugglers see moving people besides Mexican nationals as a "business opportunity." "Average smuggling rates for other-than-Mexican nationals far exceed those of Mexicans and Central and South Americans,"...

Five people are charged in a plot to employ African Americans from Compton to avert suspicion when bringing illegal immigrants across the border. In the calculus of cross-border human smuggling, Maria Lopez-Diaz allegedly concluded that black instead of brown equals green. The 60-year-old Compton woman, prosecutors say, tried to cash in on racial profiling by operating a human smuggling ring that hired mostly African American drivers who didn't speak a word of Spanish to ferry small groups of immigrants from Mexico to Los Angeles. In the end, the venture failed. Authorities announced charges Thursday against Lopez-Diaz and four others, including...

Watch a police officer stop this plane with his car John McLane's got nothing on this real Brazilian Federal Police Officer, who use his cop car to take down a plane loaded with smugglers and $150,000 of stolen electronics. Here is THE LINK.

Some of them were 15... some 12 years old Does their cruelty know NO limit? Be warned, these repulsive images  are not for the faint-of-heart: ______________________________________________ Sick bas-----s! 'Risky Whiskey' smuggling video/more at Reaganite Republican _____________________________________________ WarNet.ws   h/t Speedunque

Drug smugglers are endlessly creative when it comes to inventing ways to move marijuana, cocaine and other contraband from Mexico into the United States. In the latest innovation uncovered by law enforcement, smugglers in the border town of Nogales, Arizona were bringing drugs into the U.S. for the cost of a quarter. The parking meters on International Street, which hugs the border fence in Nogales, cost 25 cents. Smugglers in Mexico tunneled under the fence and under the metered parking spaces, and then carefully cut neat rectangles out of the pavement. Their confederates on the U.S. side would park false-bottomed...

Two men are in custody after allegedly kidnapping a Guatemalan girl and extorting the girl’s mother. Investigators say that on June 28, a woman contacted the Trenton Police and reported that her 15-year-old daughter had been kidnapped. The woman had paid to have her daughter brought to the U.S. from Guatemala. Once the girl arrived in Texas, police say that two men kidnapped her. They then allegedly demanded large sums of money over several days from the girl’s mother in exchange for the girl’s safe transport to Trenton. The mother told police that she made initial payments to the alleged...

On May 9, 2011, the Illegal Immigration Prevention Apprehension Co-op Team (IIMPACT) conducted a human smuggling investigation. During surveillance, detectives stopped a suspected smuggling load vehicle on State Route 202 at 40th Street in Phoenix. The vehicle was loaded with nine undocumented immigrants and smuggler or “coyote” who was the driver.It was discovered during further investigation that one of the persons being smuggled was a criminal alien, with a prior arrest in California by the Redwood City Sheriff’s Office in 2005 for attempted murder of a police officer. The charges in California were dismissed and there was no record of...

In Texas, nearly 8,200 farms and ranches back up to the Mexican border. The men and women who live and work on those properties say they’re under attack from the same drug cartels blamed for thousands of murders in Mexico. “It’s a war, make no mistake about it,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said. “And it’s happening on American soil.” Texas farmers and ranchers produce more cotton and more cattle than any other state, so Staples is concerned this war could eventually impact our food supply, and calls it a threat to our national security. “Farmers and ranchers are being...

DONNA — Some might say Ken Mol was fortunate to recover his truck after it was stolen from outside the Walmart in Weslaco two weeks ago. He would give it away if only he could find what was left inside. “I don’t think he’d come out of the truck himself, they’d have to pull him out,” Mol said. Since U.S. Border Patrol agents found his truck Jan. 28, Mol and his wife, Tina, have been looking for Hogan, their Labrador-Shepherd mix dog. Almost 6 years old, the canine was resting in the extended cab of Mol’s 2005 Ford F-250 pickup...

Note: The following text is a quote: Queens Man and Accomplice Charged with Attempting to Provide Material Support to Hizballah Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Joseph M. Demarest, Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the FBI, announced the filing of an indictment yesterday charging Patrick Nayyar and Conrad Stanisclaus Mulholland with attempting to provide material support to Hizballah, a designated foreign terrorist organization. The indictment also charges Nayyar with illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition. On Sept. 24, 2009, Nayyar, a 46-year-old citizen of India who had...

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (still known as ATF) is considering a pilot program that would require gun dealers in the borders states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California to report each sale of two or more rifles. Jim Pruett of Jim Pruett’s Guns and Ammo in Houston considers such a move simply a back door to gun registration. “It [would go] on record with the ATF forever,” Pruett says of the reported sales. “There’s no mention of purging the system. So what you basically have is ad-hoc gun registration.” It is hard to argue with...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will go to Arizona on Thursday after a Border Patrol agent was shot and killed in the state. “The fatal shooting of Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry last night is an unconscionable act of violence against the men and women of the Border Patrol and all those who serve and defend our country,” Napolitano said in a statement

First, some Tire Repair 101 How to set the bead on a giant off-road tire... with just starter fluid and a lighter! while stuck in the boonies: [video clip here] -MechanicsHubdotCom on Vimeo- _________________________________________________________ NOW- speaking of resourceful types...  Russian arms smuggler Viktor Bout -major supplier to Afghanistan's Northern Alliance in their 2001 war against the Taliban- has been extradited from Thailand to the United States to face terrorism charges: CNN: He's known as the "Merchant of Death" and the "Lord of War," -an alleged international arms dealer straight out of a cloak-and-dagger spy novel who eluded authorities for years and...

Two 150-year-old dolls have been x-rayed in a bid to discover if they were used by Confederate soldiers to smuggle medical supplies past Union blockades during the U.S. Civil War. It is thought the large dolls - Nina and Lucy Ann - had their hollowed out papier-mache heads stuffed with quinine or morphine for wounded and malaria-stricken Confederate troops. The Union blockade lasted from 1861 until 1865 and was intended to thwart the delivery of weapons, soldiers and supplies such as medicine to the South....

Border: If there's one word we shouldn't want to add to the U.S. lexicon, it's sicario, the Spanish word for contract killer. But with lawmen warning of sicarios now in Arizona, we may soon know that word — and worse. With little to worry about in crossing the unguarded U.S. border, it was only a matter of time before cartel smugglers began fighting over the lucrative spoils themselves. Last May 13, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned Arizona authorities that it had intelligence that 15 trained sicarios from Mexico's Sinaloa cartel were heading to Arizona, the Arizona Republic reported....

Gov Brewer to Obama: Warning Signs are Not Enough.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is slamming the Obama administration over government signs posted in the Arizona desert warning visitors to beware of illegal smugglers, saying the signs are hardly the kind of border security plan her state needs. "This is an outrage," Brewer said in a new reelection campaign ad. The ad shows the governor standing next to one of the warning signs in the middle of the Arizona desert, 80 miles from the border and, according to the ad, 30 miles from Phoenix. The signs have in recent weeks drawn attention from border-state lawmakers who say they demonstrate how...

The U.S. Border Patrol has quietly reduced its current force of available agents along the U.S.-Mexico border by cutting the overtime hours they can work even as the Obama administration is asking Congress for hundreds of millions of dollars to hire 1,000 new agents, and Congress and the public are clamoring for beefed-up border security. Several rank-and-file and senior agents told The Washington Times that a new overtime directive issued at the agency's Washington headquarters will limit their ability to get their jobs done, reduce coverage during peak smuggling periods and allow more criminals to avoid apprehension. "By lowering the...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday the federal government will move to let state and local police in non-border states rotate down to the border to help local authorities go after smugglers along the U.S.-Mexico line. In a major policy speech in which she took aim at what she called "bumper sticker" slogans and said the Obama administration has made huge strides on security, Miss Napolitano said the border can be made still more secure and said administration officials are in the middle of "surging" more boots on the ground. "We are not satisfied. There is more work to...

Mexican drug cartels have set up shop on American soil, maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona from which their scouts can monitor every move made by law enforcement officials, federal agents tell Fox News. The scouts are supplied by drivers who bring them food, water, batteries for radios -- all the items they need to stay in the wilderness for a long time.

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - A Mexican drug cartel is threatening Nogales police officers, telling them to avoid off-duty drug busts or deal with the consequences of being assaulted by armed smugglers or targeted by snipers from across the border. Nogales Police Chief Jeff Kirkham said the threats are serious, credible and a sign that drug cartels have become a much more dangerous enemy. "Some direct threats came against our officers that if they're off duty, they were not to interdict any type of narcotics coming across the border or they would be targeted," Kirkham said. Kirkham tells 9 On Your Side...

At the meeting Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl, both Republicans, got an earful from people who live in southeastern Arizona, along the border with Mexico. Huachuca City Mayor Byron Robertson told the lawmakers, "Last week when my police chief called me in and told me that an SUV-minivan had been stopped on I-10 with a 50-caliber machine gun mounted in the back and a rocket launcher."

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 3,500 acres in southern Arizona have now been closed to U.S. citizens because of the dangers posed in that area from Mexican drug smugglers. The area includes part of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. Refuge manager Mitch Ellis told Fox News: “The situation in this zone has reached a point where continued public use of the area is not prudent.” Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said: “It’s literally out of control. We need support from the federal government. It’s their job to secure the border and they haven’t done it. In...

TUCSON - Warnings are out in parts of Arizona warning alerting you of possible danger. The Bureau of Land Management is putting up signs, along Interstate 8 between Gila Bend and Stanfield. Kathy Pedrick from the Bureau of Land Management says the signs went up because of recent incidents along the border south of I-8. She says, "there was a Pinal County Sheriff's deputy shot at, there's been some homicides recently with some of the smugglers." The signs warn the public they could encounter smugglers or individuals who may be armed. Gilbert Meehl believes the signs are a good idea...

About 3,500 acres of southern Arizona have been closed off to U.S. citizens due to increased violence at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The closed off area includes part of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge that stretches along the U.S.-Mexico border. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu told Fox News that violence against law enforcement officers and U.S. citizens has increased in the past four months, forcing officers on an 80 mile stretch of Arizona land north of the Mexico border off-limits to Americans.

About 3,500 acres of southern Arizona have been closed off to U.S. citizens due to increased violence at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The closed off area includes part of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge that stretches along the U.S.-Mexico border. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu told Fox News that violence against law enforcement officers and U.S. citizens has increased in the past four months, forcing officers on an 80 mile stretch of Arizona land north of the Mexico border off-limits to Americans

PHOENIX (AP) -- An increase in smuggling violence at the Sonoran Desert National Monument about 80 miles south of Phoenix has prompted a stronger warning to visitors about drug and immigrant traffickers passing through the public lands, officials said Tuesday. The monument and three other federal lands in Arizona already have signs warning visitors that they may encounter smugglers. But 11 new signs have recently been erected...

SIERRA VISTA — Border Patrol agents working in the west desert of southern Arizona encountered drug smugglers trying out a new way to cover their tracks over the weekend: Carpet shoes. Early Saturday morning, agents assigned to the Casa Grande station of the Tucson Sector found signs of about 13 people traveling on foot near Sells, said Agent David Jimarez. Agents tracking the smugglers found signs that they appeared to have secured carpeting to the soles of their shoes in an attempt to hide their footprints, Jimarez said. The plan was poorly thought out, as agents are “not trained to...

PHOENIX (AP) - Two men shot and killed in a remote desert area about 50 miles south of Phoenix were probably ambushed by fellow smugglers, Pinal County sheriff's officials said Friday. The men had been at a migrant camp in the desert south of Interstate 8 near Antelope Peak on Sunday night when someone opened fire on them with an AK-47-type weapon, shooting each man once, said sheriff's spokeswoman Lt. Tamatha Villar. One died immediately, but the other managed to get off six shots with an AR-15-type rifle. The wounded man then used a cell phone to call for help....

More than 1,500 pounds of marijuana were discovered in a pickup by U.S. Border Patrol agents northwest of Bisbee, authorities said Tuesday. From October 2009 through April 2010, Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents have seized approximately 552,000 pounds of marijuana, estimated to be worth $441 million.

Border Patrol agents seized almost three tons of marijuana in four incidents during a 48-hour period. In two separate but similar incidents — one on Monday and one one on Tuesday — border patrol agents from the Ajo station were searching the desert for signs of illegal activity and came across an abandoned pickup truck. Each truck contained more than 1,700 pounds of marijuana, said agency spokeswoman Colleen Agle. The size of the loads is a departure from the smaller loads smugglers had been bringing across, she said. She would not speculate whether the two incidents were related. Also on...

SIERRA VISTA — Now is the time for the federal government to step up and provide the necessary support to secure Arizona’s border with Mexico, Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever told members of Congress on Tuesday. Speaking before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in Washington, Dever laid out the challenges facing law enforcement agencies along Arizona’s southern border. “Today, everything is much more organized, much more dangerous and much more dire,” he said. No longer are illegal immigrants simply flowing into the country themselves, he said. “They’re lead by very ruthless, armed and well-equipped individuals who...

Drug smugglers are turning to a sharp law enforcement tactic as they try to stop Texas law officers from chasing them.... Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Joe Trevino says agents in south Texas have had spikes thrown at their vehicles at least five times this year. Trevino told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times that at least 15 incidents were reported in 2009, in which 33 vehicles were damaged, including 13 civilian cars and trucks. Just one incident was reported in 2008...

Federal authorities say a person wearing scuba gear apparently tried to sneak two bundles of marijuana across the Mexican border through a sewer system. Border Patrol agents operating infrared cameras noticed several individuals illegally crossing into Arizona using a sewer outlet near Douglas on Friday. The Douglas Station's bike patrol went to the sewer system and saw one person carrying two bundles that were suspected to be marijuana. That person was wearing a wet suit and scuba gear and was wading through waist-high water with the bundles. The person saw the agents, dropped the bundles and began wading back toward...

State Trooper Mike Franklin circled the water-logged Jeep Grand Cherokee, puzzling over a way to get inside. Freshly plucked Monday morning from the bottom of the Rio Grande, the vehicle likely held cargo lost years ago by the river’s flow. So far, though, all efforts to crack open the twisted hunk of steel had failed. The rusted trunk door lock barely budged even with the keys found in the ignition. A crowbar offered little help in removing the years of accumulated sludge caked on the hinges. “And this isn’t the only one,” said State Trooper Johnny Hernandez, spokesman for the...

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi Ministry of Defense held a ceremony to commemorate the recovery of 235 artifacts by Iraqi Army commandos from smugglers and the subsequent handover of the items to the Iraqi Tourism and Antiquities Ministry on April 16. Iraqi Minister of Defense Abd Al-Qadir said, “The Iraqi Army is putting extraordinary pressure on smuggling gangs, which steal Iraq’s history to finance terrorist operations.” “The recovery of the artifacts was a joyous occasion because they could not be replaced with money and represented 5,000 years of Iraqi history," The Minister added. Citizens in Abu El-Kahsib, Bab El-Tawael and El-Amir...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A cartel engaged in Mexico's deadly drug wars has told its members to avoid heavy drinking and using narcotics and live a clean family life as it tries to build a well-run criminal organization, police say. Rafael Cedeno, a leader of "The Family" cartel based in the western state of Michoacan, told police after he was arrested at the weekend he had trained several thousand cartel members with courses in ethics and personal improvement. "The indoctrination of this group consisted of courses they considered to be for personal improvement, values, ethical and moral principles of the...