Under-Cover Evidence Reveals Smuggling

As Los Angeles port police officer Pedro Alvarez approached a flatbed truck parked on Terminal Island before dawn Tuesday, he caught a glimpse of dozens of faces peeking silently back at him from beneath a tarpaulin cover.

Inside were 54 men, illegal aliens from Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua who had been on the road for almost three hours before Alvarez ended their northward journey at 3 a.m. In a van parked next to the truck, Alvarez found 12 women, also illegal immigrants.

On routine patrol of the island’s berths and warehouses, Alvarez had come upon a large-scale human smuggling operation. “They barely had any room to move in there,” said Alvarez’s superior, Sgt. Bryant Torregano of the Port Patrol.

According to Torregano, four “coyotes”--one whom Alvarez saw briefly talking into a two-way radio--fled as the officer drove toward the truck parked on New Dock Street, within 2 miles of a federal prison and the western regional office of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Alvarez radioed for reinforcements to chase the fleeing smugglers, but the suspects managed to elude police, Torregano said.

Police and immigration officials who converged on the 40-foot truck said the smugglers appeared to be preparing to unload their immigrant cargo and transport them elsewhere. Besides the truck and the van, police found another van that was reportedly being used as a “scout vehicle,” Torregano said.

“It seems they thought this was an inconspicuous area,” said William J. Carroll, deputy district director of the INS Los Angeles office. “It was isolated and it was dark.”

Forty-seven of the men were from Mexico, Carroll said. Another five were Guatemalans and two were from Nicaragua. The women were all from Mexico.

None of the illegal aliens required medical treatment and they made no attempt to escape, Carroll said. Taken into INS custody, the immigrants were held at the agency’s downtown Los Angeles detention center, where they will be offered the choice of voluntary departure to Mexico or an immigration hearing.

INS officials said that since January, at least six similar large-scale smuggling rings have been broken up. The largest was in El Monte, where local police and immigration agents raided a cottage Jan. 23 and discovered 86 undocumented aliens who had been locked up in the house while waiting to be taken to jobs in the region.