Four Arrested in Hold-Ups of Aliens at Border

Four residents of Mexico were arrested early Wednesday morning in connection with three hold-ups conducted along the international border, San Diego police said.

The robberies took place at about 3 a.m. on the U.S. side of the border near the San Ysidro Port of Entry. The Police Department’s Border Crime Intervention Unit, which was patrolling there, made the arrests, police spokesman Bill Robinson said.

Officers using night-observation equipment watched as four men with knives held up two separate groups of illegal aliens, Robinson said. The officers arrested the suspects as they were waiting for and following another group of undocumented aliens, he said.

One group of aliens taken into custody by the U.S. Border Patrol early Wednesday morning later identified the four suspects as the men who had held them up, Robinson said.

The thieves took “a small amount of cash, some clothing and personal jewelry,” he said.

Arrested were Mariano Camacho Rojas, 18, and Roberto Jimenez Garcia, 20, both of Tijuana; Jorge Garcia Lopez, 23, of Torreon, Coahuila; and Ochoa Angel Garibaldi, 18, of Guadalajara. Each was held on suspicion of six counts of armed robbery.