 BORDER NEWS
Last week the body of a Chilean man who died in the desert in northern Mexico a few miles from the US border was returned to his family in Chile. Manuel Berrios died nearly three weeks before officials discovered his body.
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This week the leader of an immigrant smuggling ring was sentenced to life in prison. According to testimony at the trial of Mario Arenas-Morales, the smuggler beat male immigrants and raped female immigrants while holding them at a house waiting for the smuggling fee to be paid. Several other members of the ring have also been sentenced, but to much lesser sentences.
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Prosecutors in Alaska have announced that they have dropped charges based on the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act against four people in exchange for a plea bargain to visa fraud. The four had been accused of importing Russian women, allegedly to dance at cultural events, and forcing them to work in strip clubs. The defendants will be sentenced this August.
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The INS recently deported a former justice on the Mexican Supreme Court. Ernesto Diaz is wanted in Mexico on charges of corruption and conspiracy. He allegedly accepted a half million dollar bribe to acquit a man charged with the kidnapping, rape and murder of a six-year-old girl. He had been a fugitive since 1998, and had been living illegally in the US since 1993.
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-U.S. and Mexican authorities are planning to increase desert border patrols due to the number of migrant deaths from exposure and dehydration. The Border Patrol will dispatch 77 agents, in addition to 50 agents sent last month, to desert stations in early July. Three additional helicopters will also be added to enable more air patrols to cover the desert, and the patrol’s search-and-rescue team, BORSTAR, will add more agents in Tucson and Yuma. Cross-training programs and radio technology will enable agents on both sides of the border to cooperate in both rescues and pursuing migrant smugglers. The desert along the Arizona-Sonora border, a popular route for illegal immigration into the U.S., has been declared a “high-risk” zone by both governments. In May of this year, fourteen people, along with a suspected smuggler, died in the Arizona desert after crossing from Mexico. In early June, two migrants died of dehydration in southern Texas while trying to enter the U.S.
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-According to a study done by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), immigrant smugglers make about 0 million per year. Undocumented Mexican immigrants pay about ,000 each to be smuggled across the border into the U.S. Some 1.5 million Mexicans are arrested each year as they attempt to illegally cross the 1,984-mile (3,200 km) U.S.-Mexico border.
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