Tijuana-to-Fresno Alien Smuggling Ring Smashed

The Border Patrol broke up a ring Wednesday that was suspected of smuggling as many as 200 undocumented workers a week from Tijuana to a squalid labor camp near Fresno, Immigration and Naturalization Service Regional Commissioner Harold Ezell said.

Five people were arrested on a federal complaint charging 11 people with conspiracy, and 88 illegal aliens were taken into custody at the camp in rural Sanger, Ezell said at a news conference after the raid.

People who made contact with smugglers at a Tijuana restaurant paid as much as $450 each to be moved across the border to safe houses in San Ysidro and Santa Ana before being taken to the camp, Ezell said.

“They have a form of slavery,” Ezell said of the smugglers. “It’s involuntary servitude until they can pay off the smuggler.”

Farm workers brought into the country worked 60- to 70-hour weeks for about $120 a week, he contended. They were paid half of that amount, and the rest went to a labor contractor for shelter, food and smuggling fees, Ezell charged.

“The Immigration Service is not going to sit back and let contractors take advantage of people,” he said.

Border Patrol agents raiding a farmhouse and two smaller houses at the camp found roaches in beds, rats, insufficient toilets and showers, and too few beds for the residents, said Richard Newton, a U.S. Labor Department compliance officer.

“The place was filthy,” added Gerald Gilliam, supervisory special agent in Fresno. “There is no central cooking area and, quite often, there isn’t enough bedding. It is difficult to imagine human beings living like this.”

A federal complaint issued Aug. 7 in U.S. District Court in Fresno charged that 11 people, including six members of one family, had conspired since June, 1983, to smuggle or harbor illegal aliens.

The complaint named Delfino Arechiga-Garcia, 50, of Fresno as the labor contractor for the camp.

Others were: Santos Bolanos-Perez, 33, and his wife, Rosario Lopez, 30; Jose Lopez-De Leon, 27, and Jesus Lopez-De Leon, 27, all of Del Rey near Fresno; Guadalupe Lopez-De Leon, 34; Maximo Marques-De Leon, 32; Beatriz Lopez, 30, and Tony de la Cruz, 35, all of Santa Ana, and Roberto Lopez-De Leon, no address listed.