A woman recently pled guilty to charges of immigrant smuggling, the first of the six people charged in the scheme to do so. Four others have pled not guilty, and are scheduled for trial next month, and one person remains a fugitive. Officials say that the scheme, which began in 1996, took advantage of the Transit Without Visa program, which allows people to enter the US without a visa if they need to do so to catch a connecting international flight. 

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State troopers in Texas recently apprehended a group of 25 undocumented immigrants locked in a tractor-trailer. The truck was stopped for speeding and the trailer inspected after officers found drugs, cash and a gun on the driver. Officials say the immigrants, who were all in good health, had been locked in the trailer for about 10 hours. 

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Border Patrol agents recently rescued two undocumented immigrants who alerted agents to their presence by activating a distress beacon in the desert outside of Yuma, Arizona. This is the second time the beacons have been used since they were installed last spring.

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Officials in California believe that a group of Chinese men apprehended in Monterey entered the US in a lifeboat after overpowering the captain and engineer of a fishing boat. A few hours before their arrests, the Coast Guard had located the fishing boat, finding the two men tied up. The ship was registered in Taiwan, and Taiwanese authorities reported the vessel as missing ten days before. INS officials say that a crackdown on smuggling has led to an increase in incidents such as this. 

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Authorities are investigating whether two undocumented immigrants killed in Pinal County, Arizona last week were the victims of vigilante justice. According to a migrant who was part of the same group that had stopped by a pond, two men wearing military fatigues ambushed the group, shooting at them with a handgun and an automatic rifle.  Officials are also investigating whether the violence was the result of a clash between two different smuggling organizations. Advocates doubt this scenario, observing that in recent years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of so called citizens’ patrols in border areas. 

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This week Border Patrol agents rescued 51 undocumented immigrants locked inside a tractor-trailer. They were discovered when the truck was stopped at an immigration checkpoint near Laredo, Texas and a dog alerted agents to the possible presence of people in the trailer. The driver of the truck, who admitted to being paid $2,000 to drive the migrants through the checkpoint, was arrested on charges of human smuggling.

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