Mexican Police Charge Marines With Smuggling People Into U.S.
Two Marines were arrested in Tijuana for allegedly attempting to smuggle immigrants into the United States, U.S. military officials said Friday.
Mexican police arrested Cpl. Franklin M. Juarez and Lance Cpl. Osman S. Fuller with a man and a woman in the trunk of their car, Marine Corps spokeswoman Lt. Lara Bennett said.
Both Marines are military drivers based at Camp Pendleton, about 40 miles north of San Diego.
They were arrested early Thursday morning in their 1995 Ford Mustang in Tijuana’s Zona Norte, a gritty neighborhood known for drugs and prostitution, by city police who checked their trunk because the Marines seemed nervous, the Mexican newspaper Frontera reported.
The man and woman found in the trunk told authorities they paid between $2,000 and $2,500 each to be smuggled from Tijuana to San Diego by the Marines, according to Frontera. The newspaper said both immigrants were from Central America.
Police turned them over to Mexican federal authorities, who have jurisdiction over allegations of immigrant smuggling.
The Marines have met with a Mexican lawyer who is trying to get them released, Bennett said.
Juarez, 20, of Davie, Fla., has been assigned to Camp Pendleton since Jan. 21. Information about Fuller was not immediately available.
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