Illegal immigrant drop houses on rise in Inland area

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Illegal immigrant drop houses on rise in Inland area
Inland homes are becoming increasingly popular sites for illegal-immigrant drop houses, places where people smuggled across the border are held until family members can pay for their release, federal officials say.
The drop houses often bring violence to Inland neighborhoods. Two smugglers were shot to death last year in Moreno Valley. Last week, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested four men who threatened to kill or cut off the feet of an illegal immigrant being held captive in a dark room in a Rubidoux house unless his sister paid a $3,500 ransom.
Captives are sometimes kept in squalid surroundings. ICE agents found 37 illegal immigrants packed into a locked bedroom in a Riverside house in September 2010, lying on the floor without mattresses, stripped of their shoes so they couldn't run away and some deprived of food for days.
Thirty-seven smuggled illegal immigrants from six countries were found jammed inside a tiny bedroom in the 1800 block of Martin Luther King Boulevard in Riverside last September.
Human smugglers are increasingly choosing the Inland area over Los Angeles because of the larger, less expensive homes here, stepped-up enforcement in Los Angeles and more space between homes, which often decreases the chance of being caught, said Debra Parker, assistant special agent in charge of the Riverside ICE office, which covers Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
ICE generally does not have year-by-year comparisons on the number of drop houses, because the discovery of drop houses is infrequent and the agency's focus is on prosecutions of smugglers and criminal organizations, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said.
Ten alleged smugglers were arrested in fiscal year 2010 in connection with raids on three drop houses, in Riverside, San Bernardino and Perris, Parker said. That is up from seven arrests in 2009 and none in 2008.
"I believe there are far more drop houses out there than we are able to find," Parker said.
She said investigations, witness interviews and observations from ICE officials and local law-enforcement agencies indicate that more smugglers are locating in Riverside and San Bernardino counties than in the past.
The Inland area's thousands of foreclosed, vacant homes may be exacerbating the problem, she said.
SPREADING AWARENESS
ICE is stepping up its links with Inland law-enforcement agencies to spread awareness of drop houses, Parker said.
The huge geographical spread of Riverside and San Bernardino counties makes it more difficult for ICE to keep track of potential drop houses, she said. She declined to divulge the number of ICE agents in the Inland area for security reasons but said "there's always a hope of getting more resources."
Residents should look out for suspicious signs at neighboring homes, including boards or bars that cover up windows to prevent escape of illegal-immigrant captives, she said. Rural areas reduce the possibility of detection, but too much isolation can work against smugglers, because they need cell phone reception to communicate with family members of captives and easy access to highways, to flee quickly if law-enforcement is closing in on them, Parker said.
The tan stucco house connected with the March 2010 killings in Moreno Valley is in an ethnically diverse older neighborhood near Interstate 215 and Alessandro Boulevard that includes many rental homes where strange faces would be less noticed than in other areas, said Riverside County Sheriff's Department Detective Ron Waters. Some house multiple families under the same roof.
The home was probably used as a drop house for several weeks or months, Waters said. Neighbors said they did not notice anything suspicious.
On March 11, 2010, police rushed to the house after several 911 calls of shots fired. They found one man dead and another who was critically injured and later died. Both were later identified as human traffickers.
A third man, a smuggled illegal immigrant, was shot during the chaos and fled to a cell phone store nearly two miles away. He is cooperating with police, Waters said.
The smugglers may have been arguing over money or how much violence to use against their captives, Waters said. It's unclear whether the traffickers shot each other or whether other smugglers -- two to four others escaped -- shot them, he said.
Police have two suspects they are building cases against, Waters said. They are both Mexican nationals who were in the United States illegally and may be back in Mexico, he said.
The investigation led police to another house, in Mead Valley, west of Perris. Two people living in that house had previously been arrested for human smuggling, and Waters believed they were part of the same smuggling ring involved with the Moreno Valley house. But, in an illustration of the difficulty sometimes in shutting down drop houses, police did not find any illegal immigrants and there was not enough evidence to charge them, Waters said.
VIOLENCE INCREASING
The shootings in Moreno Valley are part of an increase in violence associated with drop houses, Parker said.
Fewer people have been attempting to cross the border because of tighter border enforcement and a poor economy, leading to fewer clients for smugglers and higher fees, which are now typically $2,500 to $3,500, Parker said. The charge is sometimes hiked once the traffickers have the illegal immigrant captive in a drop house, she said.
Two Perris residents pleaded guilty Jan. 28 to false-imprisonment charges after a man told investigators they threatened he would be "cut into pieces" unless family members came up with $4,000, which was $1,000 more than the original fee.
And the captive discovered in the Rubidoux house last week said he was beaten and threatened with death unless his sister in Oregon paid $3,500, up from the previously-agreed-upon smuggling fee of $3,000.
"Members of these criminal organizations are becoming more desperate," Parker said.
DROP HOUSE SIGNS
Federal immigration officials say drop houses, where illegal immigrants smuggled across the border are held until family members pay for their release, are becoming more common in the Inland area. Here are a few signs to look for:
Boards or bars on windows. They're used to prevent captives from escaping.
Numerous people coming and going late at night.
Suspicious people who appear to be standing guard or taking breaks outside.
If you believe you spot a potential drop house, call your local law enforcement agency.
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