Deaf Mexicans Were Moved Through L.A. to New York

Scores of deaf Mexican nationals allegedly recruited to sell trinkets in New York City were probably smuggled into the United States via San Diego and then taken to Los Angeles before being transported east, according to federal authorities and court papers.

In interviews with investigators, victims have described being recruited in Mexico, spirited across the border into Southern California and later taken on airplanes or buses to New York. Others said they were recruited while already in California.

Directing the operation, the peddlers told authorities, was a man known as “the boss”--identified by federal authorities as Renato Paoletti, a Mexican citizen who remains a fugitive. Paoletti allegedly traveled across the border and lured the deaf people with promises of U.S. jobs, according to a victim’s statement included in the federal complaint.

Seven of Paoletti’s accused accomplices--including his mother, brother, sister and girlfriend--are in custody in New York. Four have already been charged with violations of immigration law, but officials say all could face additional charges, including involuntary servitude, a civil rights violation.

Federal investigators are pursuing possible leads pointing to related operations preying on deaf people elsewhere. But both U.S. officials and a representative of the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles said they were unaware of any similar scheme targeting the deaf in Southern California, the nation’s primary magnet for Mexican immigrants.

“I don’t ever recall encountering anything like this operating here,” said Richard K. Rogers, district director for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles.

While the INS in Washington has assembled a task force to handle the expanding inquiry, Rogers said Tuesday that agents in Los Angeles had not yet been directed to launch a formal investigation.

But agency spokesmen said the Southern California connection probably will be scrutinized intensely once federal investigators have conducted in-depth interviews with the victims. The former trinket sellers remained in local custody in New York as material witnesses, but are expected to be turned over the INS soon. Most are believed to be illegal immigrants.

The cross-border, deaf-peddler ring may have been in operation for nine years, according to a federal complaint. One person told authorities that a ring member had supplied false papers with which to cross the border.

Groups working with the deaf in Southern California said exploitation is common in the widespread trinket trade, whether the sellers are immigrants or U.S. natives. So-called “king peddlers”--those at the top of the hierarchal enterprise--traditionally distribute sales items and receive a cut of profits.

“It’s a racket,” said Barbara Lincoln of the House Ear Institute, a Los Angeles educational and medical organization serving the hearing-impaired.

But several advocates for the deaf here said they knew of no extensive smuggling operation like the one uncovered in New York.

The sensational case came to light last weekend after New York police discovered 62 people--mostly deaf Mexican nationals--residing in two residences in the borough of Queens. Among those found were 10 minors, four of them U.S. citizens by birth, and the seven adults later detained as suspects.

Although the Los Angeles area is the major destination for illegal immigrants from Mexico, the region is also a hub for those heading elsewhere in the United States--including New York, where growing numbers of undocumented Mexican people have settled in recent years, selling flowers on the streets and taking other menial jobs.

Most undocumented Mexican people tend to show up at the U.S. homes of friends and relatives, who often help them pay off debts to coyotes who smuggled them in and assist the newcomers in finding jobs and shelter. Relatively few are recruited in Mexico to work here. But officials say the deaf arrivals appear to have had no social or familial network here, rendering them more vulnerable to “the boss” and his confederates.