Key Immigrant-Smuggling Suspect Arrested at LAX

When federal agents arrested Jose Leon Castillo as he stepped off a plane in Los Angeles earlier this month, they finally captured the ringleader of an international immigrant-smuggling operation that has been bringing illegal human cargo into Southern California for at least five years, authorities said Tuesday.

Castillo was one of the most wanted such smugglers in the world, the subject of a 14-month criminal investigation that spanned two continents, according to U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner.

He wasn’t just active in Los Angeles, according to Meissner and other authorities who announced his arrest at a news conference Tuesday.

The Honduran national, they allege, traveled from country to country to oversee a complex criminal operation that transported Central Americans, primarily, to Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, New York and other American cities.

Authorities believe that Castillo’s operation smuggled potentially thousands of people into the United States--by bus, car, tractor-trailor, boat and plane.

They say that when Castillo flew to Guatemala on a smuggling-related mission Oct. 5, INS agents and Guatemalan authorities who were investigating him denied him permission to enter the country.

Instead, they put him on a plane to Los Angeles.

And when Castillo got to LAX, INS agents were waiting to put the cuffs on him.

“It worked out exactly the way we wanted,” said Hipolito Acosta, district director of the INS’ Mexico City office, which oversees INS investigations in Central and South America. “He was one of our major targets.”

Castillo’s arrest was disclosed Tuesday to highlight what Meissner and other INS authorities call an innovative law enforcement partnership between the United States and authorities in half a dozen Latin American countries.

In all, the joint anti-smuggling effort--dubbed Operation Forerunner--has resulted in the arrest of 38 alleged immigrant smugglers in the last month, Acosta said.

The accused ran more than two dozen criminal organizations in Brazil, Mexico and across Central America. Their organizations did not work together, and most were relatively small, authorities said.

Castillo’s operation, however, often moved groups of 60, 70 even 100 migrants into the United States at a time, officials said.

Meissner and Acosta said that it was unclear exactly how many people Castillo has helped smuggle into the United States but that authorities believe he has been doing so for at least five years. They also said they did not know how many people Castillo had working for him.

The smuggling rings used many of the same methods, charging would-be migrants from 25 countries substantial fees and housing and transporting them in unsafe conditions through a chain of countries on their way to the United States.

Most paid the smugglers an average of $3,800, with some forking over $7,000 or more, authorities said.

Operation Forerunner is part of an INS crackdown against international immigrant smugglers launched three years ago. It is the eighth such operation since the crackdown began.

But what makes this effort different, authorities said, is that it is the first coordinated attempt to protect migrants who are victims of such smuggling operations. It is also the first, they said, to enlist the assistance of several of the countries through which migrants typically pass.

All but four of the 38 arrests, in fact, were made by officials of those countries, acting under the guidance of U.S. immigration authorities. Three Ecuadoran nationals were arrested Oct. 13 in Miami.

“This was the first simultaneous, coordinated action between all of these countries at one time,” Meissner said. “It shows that you can be effective against this nasty, vicious business by reaching abroad and by cooperating.”

Starting Sept. 21, authorities in Belize, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama interdicted 3,500 migrants, who were then sent back to their native countries.

As part of the operation, Houston-based INS agents “were able to debrief a great number of migrants who identified Castillo as the organizer of the group that smuggled them into the United States,” Acosta said.

Even before that, Castillo was the subject of a major investigation conducted by the INS’ Houston Anti-Smuggling Unit in conjunction with Acosta’s Mexico City INS office.

Castillo is in federal custody in Los Angeles awaiting transfer to Houston, where his arrest warrant was issued. He is expected to be charged with immigrant smuggling and tried in Houston. If convicted, he faces as much as five years in prison for each smuggling count, Acosta said.

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Meyer reported from Los Angeles, Schrader from Washington.