Six Immigrant Smugglers Guilty of Hostage Taking

A federal jury convicted six members of an immigrant smuggling ring of hostage taking and other crimes Thursday after a trial in which two women told of being raped repeatedly while being held for ransom in a Canoga Park drop house.

During their three-day ordeal, two men who had been smuggled also were beaten with wrenches and metal bars.

All four immigrants were later dumped in remote areas of Southern California.

Tears welled in the eyes of some jurors as the two women, speaking through a Spanish-language interpreter, provided graphic details of their assaults.

The Los Angeles jury found the six defendants guilty after deliberating six hours. A seventh suspect was acquitted.

Those convicted face life prison terms on the hostage-taking charges. They also were found guilty of smuggling and harboring illegal immigrants and seriously injuring them.

The ringleader, Mario Arenas Morales, accused of ordering the rapes and beatings, also was convicted of trying to run over an Immigration and Naturalization Service agent during a raid on another drop house in Pacoima.

Assistant U.S. Attys. Tracy Wilkison and Peter Hernandez, who tried the case, expressed satisfaction with the jury’s verdict, despite the acquittal of one defendant.

But defense lawyers said the jury had been improperly inflamed by the prosecution’s resorting to testimony about the rapes and beatings.

“That was the only basis for the convictions,” said Arenas’ lawyer, Jose C. Rojo.

None of the defendants testified during the trial. Rojo and other defense lawyers admitted in closing arguments to the jury that their clients were guilty of immigrant smuggling.

However, they strenuously denied the more serious hostage-taking charges.

Rojo argued that the immigrants agreed to be held as hostages before they left Mexico.

The two women and two men were part of a group of more than 20 immigrants who were brought across the border by the smuggling ring in December with the understanding that they would be held until relatives in the United States paid fees of $1,000 or $1,200 a person.

“If these people agree to be detained, then there can’t be any hostage taking,” he argued.

By its vote, the jury clearly disagreed.

Another defense lawyer, Richard M. Callahan, said he planned to appeal the verdict to a higher court.

While the defense lawyers uniformly expressed revulsion over the sexual attacks, all insisted their clients did not take part in them.

The women identified several defendants as having raped and sodomized them. DNA tests showed no match between them and any of the defendants, but the women testified that the smugglers forced them to wash thoroughly and even threw bleach on them, presumably to eliminate evidence of rape.

Rape is not a crime prosecutable under federal law. In this case, it was used to support the government’s charge that the women suffered serious bodily harm and were hostage victims.

The attacks grew out an incident that occurred when a van carrying the 20 immigrants from the border area reached the Los Angeles city limits.

Unable to get the driver to say where he planned to stop, Angel Garcia testified, he and another passenger, Francisco Rodriguez Acuna, wrapped a seat belt around the driver’s neck.

As the van weaved perilously from one lane to another, the other passengers screamed at the two men to stop and they finally let go, Garcia said.

Punishment awaited them when the van reached its destination in Canoga Park. Garcia and Rodriguez were herded inside the drop house with the others. The smugglers took them into a bedroom and proceeded to kick and pummel them until they were semiconscious. One assailant tried to rip off Garcia’s ear with pliers.

The smugglers also raped and sodomized the two women repeatedly over three days, according to trial testimony. Garcia said he was forced to watch sometimes.

Their ransoms unpaid, the four were finally taken away and dropped off, the men in an agricultural field near Moorpark and the women near Brawley in Imperial County.

Ventura County sheriff’s deputies found Garcia and Rodriguez, took them to a nearby hospital and notified the INS.

A major break in the case came a few days later, while one of the women was being interviewed by an INS agent at a relative’s home.

A smuggling ring member who had witnessed the rapes called to apologize after he was picked up for making an illegal border crossing from Mexico.

He was brought to Los Angeles, where he identified Arenas as the ringleader and led INS agents to the Canoga Park drop house. Agents arrested one suspect there and found their way to another safe house in Pacoima, where they seized Arenas and the other suspects, along with a number of other illegal immigrants.