Smuggling Migrants Toward the U.S. Is a Booming Business; Driver Claims He’s Made 100 Migrant-Smuggling ‘runs’ Through Arizona

WSJ: Smuggling Migrants Toward the U.S. Is a Booming Business:

Services to help people cross borders in Latin America have thrived on demand; ‘We don’t see ourselves as traffickers’

Anderson Giraldo delivered a smooth sales pitch to migrants, peddling clandestine trips across open sea or thick jungle like vacation packages.

In audio and video clips on social media, he sold himself and his partners as trusted guides to clients who angled to get into the U.S. “I run this group in charge of all the routes,” Giraldo said in one audio recording heard by The Wall Street Journal. “Everyone knows my work. I do it right. I’m serious, sincere and very responsible.”

Colombian prosecutors and special operations police working with U.S. officials recently dismantled the group, arresting 11 people in four cities. They called it an important strike against migrant smuggling through the country. But success stories in that fight are fleeting, Colombian and U.S. authorities say, because others are always eager to step into the void.

“They see opportunity for business,” said Hugo Tovar, the top prosecutor overseeing migrant trafficking investigations for the Colombian attorney general’s office.

Pervasive networks of smugglers and freelance guides have thrived on demand from a desperate clientele looking to begin new lives in America. U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimates 2.4 million migrants arrived at the country’s southwestern border in the year ending Sept. 30, topping the previous year’s total—a minority of them at legal border crossings.

Moving them up north has become big business from South America to northern Mexico, and a source of income for residents of poor towns and cities where well-paid employment is scarce. A 2021 United Nations study estimated that migrants from three countries—Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador—paid $1.7 billion a year to smugglers. —>READ MORE HERE

Driver claims he’s made 100 migrant-smuggling ‘runs’ through Arizona:

Federal authorities are holding two men and a woman in connection with 10 separate migrant smuggling events in a 16-month span in Southern Arizona.

According to federal court documents, Edward Anthony Peralta, Britni Cheyenne Bates and Jeffrey Bukki Jaimez allegedly conspired to transport at least 35 foreign nationals with no legal basis to be in the U.S. from the Mexico-Arizona border to the interior of the country.

Peralta and Bates first came to the attention of law enforcement in February 2022, when U.S. Border Patrol agents and Arizona Department of Public Safety officers stopped a 2017 Jeep Cherokee with New Mexico license plates carrying three unauthorized migrants in the back along State Route 90 near Benson.

Peralta was driving the Jeep and Bates was in the front seat with him. Court records show the two were arrested on a charge of transportation of illegal aliens. Federal officials declined prosecution because neither suspect had a criminal history, records show.

A few months later – July 21, 2022 – Border Patrol agents assigned to the Wilcox (Arizona) Station stopped a black Mercedes E350 with temporary license plates carrying five undocumented migrants. A records check revealed the plates belonged to a different vehicle registered to Bates in Tucson, Arizona. Federal officials decided not to prosecute the driver, Anthony Feldman, and he was released.

Feldman was arrested again near Wilcox less than two weeks later for allegedly transporting another five unauthorized migrants. This time he was charged, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and served 30 days in jail, records show. —>READ MORE HERE

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