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Old 02-05-2010, 12:07 PM
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Jeanfromfillmore Jeanfromfillmore is offline
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Default Bus companies accused of immigrant smuggling

Bus companies accused of immigrant smuggling
by Associated Press
Posted on February 4, 2010 at 11:25 AM
Updated yesterday at 11:25 AM
******
Federal agents have targeted more than a dozen local bus companies they say shuttled scores of illegal immigrants to destinations across the U.S., vowing to continue cracking down on smuggling organizations' transportation networks.
ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton was in Houston on Wednesday to announce results of a three-month operation focused on Houston- area smuggling by transportation companies, saying federal agents charged 22 suspects with conspiracy to transport illegal immigrants.
Federal agents executed nine search warrants Tuesday morning and targeted 14 businesses, including one on the city's southeast side that Morton said used armed guards and pit bulls to hold passengers in a stash house before they were smuggled on to their final destinations.
''Houston, unfortunately, has become a hub for these illegal transportation companies," the ICE official said.
Morton called the operation "unprecedented," saying that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is no longer targeting just one transportation company or arresting just one driver at a time.
Morton called the operation "unprecedented," saying that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is no longer targeting just one transportation company or arresting just one driver at a time.
''We are taking on the whole industry," he said.
He said the businesses investigated in the ICE operation were not legitimate transportation companies, but worked exclusively with smuggling organizations. The companies charged illegal immigrants "exorbitant" fees -- up to $650 for a one-way bus ticket, he said, and transported illegal immigrants from Houston throughout the United States, to places such as Miami, Washington D.C., New Jersey and New York.
Morton said the companies avoided major highways that were likely to be patrolled by law enforcement, and traveled primarily at night. The companies paid commissions to smugglers, typically $200 to $300 each, to bring the smuggled immigrants to them, and would buy and trade passengers for fees, authorities said.
''These companies didn't treat their passengers as persons, but rather as commodities to be bought and sold," Morton said.
Ed Gallagher, the deputy criminal chief for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Houston, described the crackdown on the transportation companies as a large-scale operation.
He said the 22 criminal defendants were charged with conspiracy to transport illegal immigrants, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
ICE officials also made 81 administrative arrests of suspected illegal immigrants during Tuesday's raids of the transportation businesses, which are located primarily in east and southeast Houston. The suspected illegal immigrants found at the companies were placed in deportation proceedings, federal officials said.
Kevin Lashus, a former assistant chief counsel for ICE who is now in private practice, said the shift toward targeting the smuggling transportation network -- rather than a single driver or van load of illegal immigrants -- is significant.
The Obama administration has stepped up inspections of companies' employment paperwork since last year, and now appears to be going after those involved in the logistics of smuggling, he said.
He said by targeting first the driver of a transportation company and then the owner for prosecution, investigators can move up the smuggling chain.
''It's a classic shakedown," Lashus said. "But they're not just going after the employers -- they're going after the transportation system, the underground trafficking routes that are used in Southern Texas and in Houston."
Several of the companies raided on Tuesday appeared to be vacant on Wednesday. The sign outside one of the alleged stash houses on Harrisburg Boulevard advertised that the building is for lease.
Down the street, an alleged stash house near the railroad tracks was locked off behind a black wrought-iron fence.
A sign reading Bienvenidos -- "Welcome" in Spanish -- adorned an empty office in a converted trailer at a third targeted company.
http://www.wfaa.com/news/crime/Houst-83531587.html
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Old 02-07-2010, 10:22 AM
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Jeanfromfillmore Jeanfromfillmore is offline
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Houston Bus Companies Were Links in Illegal Immigrant Network
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: February 4, 2010
http://timespeople.nytimes.com/getst...WS%26ei%3D5099
HOUSTON — Raids on 14 illegal bus companies here have shed light on a seedy underground system that transported illegal immigrants all over the country and that sometimes held them captive until their relatives paid exorbitant fares, federal law enforcement officials said Thursday.
Using minivans, the companies were carrying hundreds of illegal immigrants from Mexico to cities across the United States, taking back roads and traveling primarily at night to avoid the authorities, according to criminal complaints filed in Federal District Court. Twenty-two people were arrested earlier this week on charges of using their businesses to transport illegal immigrants.
The bus companies worked exclusively with smuggling operations, officials said. The owners paid commissions of up to $300 for each passenger to smugglers who had brought the immigrants across the Mexican border. Then they held the immigrants in safe houses for days, often under guard, until they loaded them onto vans, according to court documents.
Agents said that at one of the bus companies raided this week, Super Express Van Tours, they found the operators had used pit bulls and armed guards to keep the immigrants from leaving a safe house next door to the office.
“These were not legitimate transportation companies like Greyhound,” said John Connolly, the deputy special agent in charge in Houston for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The companies also charged far more than legitimate carriers would for the trips, asking them to pay as much as $650 for a ride to cities like Los Angeles, Atlanta and Miami. The fee was usually paid at the end of the journey by relatives of the immigrants, officials said. In some cases the drivers refused to release the passenger if the family could not pay, the complaints said.
“These companies did not treat their passengers as persons, but rather as commodities to be bought and sold,” said John T. Morton, an assistant secretary of homeland security, at a news conference Wednesday.
The raids in Houston signified a shift in strategy, officials said. In the past, immigration agents have intercepted individual drivers and arrested the illegal immigrants they carried, but this time the government went after the owners and operators of the bus companies, a critical link in the smuggling network.
Some of the companies had been operating for years. Super Express Van Tours vehicles had been stopped by the police and the Border Patrol seven times from 2004 to 2009, in several states, and each time the driver was arrested for transporting illegal immigrants, according to a criminal complaint.
The owner, Fermin A. Tovar, who was arrested Tuesday, charged riders $200 to $600, depending on their destination, but disguised the true fares on passenger manifests using a code, the complaint said.
The money for the fares was either wired to Mr. Tovar at Western Union offices or deposited by his drivers into his bank accounts at branches across the country, always in amounts small enough to escape the notice of regulators, officials said.
In one two-and-a-half year period, Mr. Tovar took in $900,000 in cash deposits to two bank accounts he controlled, the complaint said.
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Old 02-07-2010, 12:28 PM
Twoller Twoller is offline
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Wow. Bus companies. What they are not telling us is the immigration status of the people running, employing and servicing the buses. All legals, is my guess. Or anchor babies.
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