Stephanie Jackter
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Registered: 11-3-2002
Location: Arizona
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Smuggling Kids
Desperate families try to reunite using risky, illegal method
By Jerry Kammer
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
November 9, 2003
Nine-year-old Rosa struggled to be brave as she described how a smuggler had tried to take her from Tijuana into San Diego and on to Pomona, where her
mother was waiting.
The man gave her another child's passport, put her in his car and told her to be quiet. But when they approached the inspection booth at the border
"the man got very nervous." Before long, Rosa said, he admitted everything. And so did she.
A small girl with big eyes and long brown hair, Rosa told her story to an official of the Mexican Consulate, which keeps an office at the border.
"I want my mother!" cried Rosa, who said her mother had fled to Pomona to escape Rosa's physically abusive father.
At San Ysidro, the busiest border crossing in the world, Rosa is just one character in the drama of human dislocations and immigration violations that
is staged along the jagged, 1,950-mile border between Mexico and the United States.
Many of the dislocations involve children like Rosa, whose parents hire smugglers to bring them to the United States, where the parents have found
work.
Mexican authorities, alarmed at the dangers the children face and concerned that many smugglers aren't prosecuted by U.S. authorities, want to get
tough on the smugglers. They're asking for U.S. cooperation so smugglers who would otherwise be released into Mexico can be detained and prosecuted
there.
In the past 12 months, Mexican consular officials have received 2,085 smuggled children from U.S. authorities, who intercepted them at the San Ysidro
port of entry.
The children are turned over to the consulate, which finds them shelter in Tijuana until they can be reunited with their families.
How many more slip through is anyone's guess.
"That's like trying to say how many fish you didn't catch," said one U.S. official, who was unable to be quoted by name because of agency restrictions
on speaking to the news media.
The business is less risky than it may seem because those who are caught stand a good chance of being released immediately. The U.S. Attorney's Office
in San Diego is so busy with more serious border-related crimes that it usually prosecutes only those smugglers who are repeat offenders or have
risked the lives of their human cargo by cramming them into dangerous compartments or abusing them.
The number of smuggled children discovered at the San Ysidro border has dropped slightly in recent years, but the flow appears to be picking up at
other parts of the border. The Mexican Consulate in Douglas, Ariz., for example, said the 136 children intercepted last year at the border crossing
there represent a 20-fold increase from 2001. Consul Manuel Escobar said he expects this year's total to rise again.
Escobar's office recently received two children from U.S. authorities after a Phoenix woman tried to present them as her own.
"The kids acknowledged that she wasn't their mother," said Bill Molaski, interim director at the port of entry. "Children are not good liars."
Eager to reunite
Typically, child smuggling is arranged by parents who have established themselves in the United States after entering the country illegally. They are
eager to reunite their families but reluctant to risk the round trip to Mexico themselves.
Sometimes, the smugglers are relatives with U.S. citizenship and no smuggling history. Often they are organized hustlers in a lucrative, frequently
underground business that papers its moves with counterfeit documents.
Smugglers sometimes buy visas from people who obtained them legitimately and report them as lost after turning them into cash. Smuggling bands have
also hired homeless people , elderly Americans driving motor homes and even U.S. high school kids who want to make a quick buck to drive children
across the border.
According to U.S. and Mexican officials and immigrants, smugglers' fees start at a few hundred dollars to take a child to a relative waiting at a
restaurant parking lot just across the border. The fees reach a few thousand dollars to deliver the child to parents living in far-away states.
Sometimes the business turns bizarre, as with 12-year-old Floriberta Jimenez Tomas, who was hidden in a secret compartment in a van driven to the San
Ysidro crossing in August.
U.S. authorities confiscated the van after finding a woman hidden in the dashboard. But neither the smuggler nor the woman mentioned that Floriberta
was hidden in another compartment. Two days later, after the van had been in a storage facility on Otay Mesa, she climbed out.
Sometimes the business is ugly with greed. In Victoria, Texas, last spring, 19 migrants died after smugglers crammed them and 55 others from Mexico
and Central America into a stifling tractor-trailer. Among the dead were a 5-year-old boy and his father.
Many smugglers, like a streetwise 18-year-old Mexican woman arrested the day Rosa was caught, go about their business with the confidence that U.S.
authorities won't prosecute them.
"You have to do this a lot of times before they'll send you to jail." She was as nonchalant as Rosa was traumatized. Asked how many times, the woman
responded with a shrug, "I'd say five times."
That day's arrest was her third. She was released into Mexico under an "expedited removal," an administrative procedure that could raise the penalty
if she enters the United States again.
One U.S. official at the San Ysidro border crossing said he knows of smugglers who come to Tijuana with the idea of earning some money and returning
home before their luck runs out.
"They've told me, 'It's a business and I'll leave after I get caught so many times,' " the official said.
Selective prosecution
In San Diego, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Lasater acknowledged that his office doesn't prosecute many smugglers caught at the border.
"We concentrate our prosecutions on cases that involve enhanced endangerment," he said, using a term that generally describes situations where
smugglers cram immigrants into dangerous compartments.
Lasater's office filed charges in September against a pair of U.S. citizens, charging that they had given cough medicine to a 9-month-old infant "in
order to put the child to sleep and facilitate the illegal entry."
According to court documents, the drugged infant had to be taken to Chula Vista Medical Center for care.
Lasater said such endangerment cases and other border-related crimes involving drug smugglers and criminal aliens already make up about 85 percent of
his office's caseload. Lasater's office simply doesn't have the resources to prosecute all the people smugglers, too.
Adele Fasano, San Diego director of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, said other forms of punishment are available for offenders who are
not U.S. citizens. A non-citizen can be punished administratively with confiscation of a visitor's visa, she said. Permanent residents can lose their
right to live legally in the United States.
"We can't do that with a citizen," Fasano said. "We can't take away someone's citizenship for smuggling."
Mexican consular officials think more child smugglers should be prosecuted.
"If they are not prosecuted, they get a message that they can try again," said Lozano, the Mexican consulate official.
And if the U.S. can't handle the caseload, Miguel Martinez of the Mexican consulate in San Diego says, smugglers who are citizens of Mexico should be
turned over to Mexican authorities rather than set free.
Consular officials and law enforcement officials from the two countries met in August and again in September to discuss that possibility. They have
agreed to meet again.
Some officials shake their heads at the dangers and desperation involved in the smuggling of children.
"It's amazing to me that parents would turn their children over to a smuggler," Molaski said.
Escobar, the Mexican consulate in Douglas, offered an explanation: "Parents will always try to have their children with them."
When the goin' gets tough, the wierd turn pro
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flyfishinPam
Super Nomad
Posts: 1727
Registered: 8-20-2003
Location: Loreto, BCS
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Mood: gone fishin'
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Wake up call for INS?
probably not. I cannot even remember how many times I've driven across the border with my two children and the immigration officer isn't even
interested in seeing our passports. We usually ger a better look through of the documents when walking across. And I've never had to show birth
certificates or notorized permission from dad that they can enter the US. All because there are three of us in the vehicle and I hold out three US
passports that are often not even opened up.
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thebajarunner
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3715
Registered: 9-8-2003
Location: Arizona....."Free at last from crumbling Cali
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Mood: muy amable
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Kids across the border
Couple years ago we took my brother in law, Jose and his 8 year old daughter down to Tecate for a quick shopping trip.
On the way back Joe showed his green card. The US gate officer looked in the back seat, smiled and said "and what grade are you in, honey."
Rosie grinned and chirped "I'm in the third grade."
Residency established, proceed on your way.
English is still the best document you can carry.
Baja Arriba!!
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Stephanie Jackter
Senior Nomad
Posts: 566
Registered: 11-3-2002
Location: Arizona
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Got that right, both of you.
Try smuggling a baby across! They NEVER asked me for papers once for the little brown baby I used to bring back and forth. They don't want to get
involved in the hassle of having to take a baby away from it's caretaker, so they won't even ask you if you're blonde and blue eyed. The ultimate
"don't ask don't tell" policy.- Stephanie
When the goin' gets tough, the wierd turn pro
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