5 More ‘Coyotes,’ 36 Aliens Seized at LAX, Ontario Airports

Five suspected “coyotes” and 36 more aliens were arrested in the crackdown on the smuggling of illegal immigrants aboard commercial airliners, authorities said Friday.

Immigration agents arrested four smugglers, all Mexican males, at Los Angeles International Airport late Thursday and early Friday as the men drove up to the airport in three vehicles containing 10 of the aliens, said Ernest Gustafson, district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Fourteen other aliens, including two Israelis, also were taken into custody at LAX.

At Ontario Airport, agents arrested a U.S. citizen bringing four illegal aliens, all Mexican citizens, to the airport. Another six aliens, including a Colombian woman, were arrested as they waited to board flights to Eastern cities.

None of the suspected smugglers were immediately identified.

Most of the illegal immigrants were Mexican. Others were from El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

Nearly 600 aliens and suspected smugglers have been arrested at airports throughout the country since the crackdown began on Feb. 27.

The airport arrests followed the breakup earlier this week of “one of the most sophisticated” smuggling rings with the arrests of four other reputed smugglers, Gustafson said.

Gustafson said the ring stretched from the Dominican Republic to Mexico to the border to Los Angeles.

He said the INS will continue to assign plainclothes agents at airports and at bus and train terminals. Gustafson said the smuggling rings target desperate immigrants who pay anywhere from $500 to $6,000 to be brought into the United States and transported to the East Coast.