8,000 Immigrants Arrested in Multinational Sting

Law enforcement officials have arrested nearly 8,000 people from 39 countries who allegedly attempted to enter the United States and Canada illegally in a sting described as one of the largest multinational anti-smuggling operations ever, authorities said Wednesday.

Officials also took into custody 75 alleged smugglers--seven of whom are U.S. citizens--and other people charged with selling counterfeit documents during the effort, dubbed Operation Crossroads International, said Kevin Rooney, acting commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. More than half the migrants were arrested at the Mexican border, where large numbers were headed for California, authorities said.

Law enforcement officers in Central and South America, Mexico and the Caribbean also seized close to $9 million worth of narcotics and several fraudulent documents. About 5,500 illegal immigrants were repatriated during the operation, which ended June 20.

“The message is clear--the United States is committed with its partners to pursuing smugglers wherever they operate,” said Hipolito Acosta, the INS’ director in Mexico City who was in charge of the effort. Law enforcement officials in Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama and Peru participated in the operation.

The arrests follow the announcement last week of efforts by U.S. and Mexico to make illegal border crossings less dangerous in the wake of the recent deaths of 14 migrants who were trying to cross the desert from Mexico into Arizona.

Acosta, who once worked as an undercover agent patrolling the Mexico border, said the operation was a success because it helped prevent suffering and perhaps even deaths among the migrants--many of whom trust their lives to smugglers and are subjected to beatings, rapes and the threat of death on their route to the United States.

“One of the greatest satisfactions I get with this kind of international cooperation is that we’re targeting those individuals we should be targeting--the smugglers who prey on those individuals who are seeking a better way of life,” Acosta said.

The INS, Acosta said, encourages “legal migration to the United States and we’re going to make all our efforts to deter illegal migration. But most importantly, we want to make sure that migrants are aware of the risks they face from the moment they leave their homes until they get to the United States. The dangers they face are not only on our borders, but on the entire route.”

Officials said they recovered cocaine, marijuana and heroin during the operation. The drugs were being smuggled into the country along with the “human cargo.”

Operation Crossroads is the latest in a series of nine anti-smuggling efforts that have been conducted over the last five years. Officials said they plan on reviewing the efforts as they move forward with their border-monitoring plans.

“We will be looking at statistics to see what the effects of our operations are,” Rooney said. “We are increasing our financial and human resource commitment to support equipment for border safety.”

Acosta said a major goal of the INS is to dismantle smuggling rings and target individuals involved in smuggling. As many as 50 to 100 migrants are smuggled by some organizations, which charge between $3,000 and $7,000 per person.

Greg Gagne, a spokesman for the INS, said the organizations aren’t large-scale, but rather loose federations between several smugglers that transfer humans from country to country.

“That’s how they get treated, as commodities,” Gagne said. “They’re brought, sold and moved.”