‘Ruthless’ Traffickers Hit L.A.

The discovery this week of more than 100 immigrants held against their will in a Watts bungalow illustrates the fact that human traffickers have begun to shift their focus from Arizona to Los Angeles, immigration officials said Thursday.

Crackdowns on illegal border crossings in Texas and California have pushed sophisticated smuggling operations to Arizona. But federal officials, helped by community tips to houses crammed with illegal immigrants, have been cracking down on the sometimes violent operations. That has pushed smugglers to Los Angeles, where they have found more tolerant communities, immigration officials said.

Russell R. Ahr, a spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix, said the shift there began when the smuggling of illegal immigrants became so lucrative that it attracted drug traffickers and kidnappers.

“When the narco elements started moving human beings, they brought their propensity for violence with them,” Ahr said. Hundreds of home invasions related to the illegal-immigrant trade were reported in Phoenix every year, he said.

Those tactics appear to have backfired on the smugglers, as the violence has outraged residents in the largely immigrant areas where such operations are found.

“What we’ve seen here is a willingness by residents in the Latino community to assist us in identifying locations where potentially people are being imprisoned in conditions that are just intolerable,” Ahr said. “There has just been unacceptable levels here of extortion, hostage taking, kidnapping and outright homicide. There’re people who have lived in these areas a long time, and suddenly within a stone’s throw there’re these gun-toting people willing to use lethal force,” he said. “There’s a decrease in quality of life in these areas, and so there’s a willingness to reach out to police and to us.”

By contrast, many Los Angeles immigrants seem to believe “that these smugglers are latter-day Robin Hoods, that they’re doing good things, that they’re just trying to help people out, so a lot of people in the community are not anxious to report them,” said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in California.

Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn agreed that some L.A. neighborhoods are so alienated from law enforcement and government agencies that they would rather tolerate crime and blight than complain to officials.

The Watts house, which had bars over its windows, two pit bulls roaming the yard and heavy chains and locks on all the doors, had operated for two years, according to neighbors.

When authorities, acting on a tip, raided the house Tuesday night, said Kevin Jeffery, a special agent with the immigration agency, some neighbors began to chant for agents and police to let the immigrants go free.

“Neighbors started to get restless. A concern was to leave the area as quickly as we did,” Jeffery said.

But he said that sympathy for the smuggling of immigrants is misplaced.

“Smugglers are identified as Robin Hoods in Norteno music, like they’re providing a service, and that’s not the truth,” Jeffery said. “They’re ruthless, coldblooded individuals who will do anything to get their money.” Women have been raped by smugglers and relatives have received calls threatening the mutilation of children if they don’t get their money, he said.

Some immigration officials, however, believe it is just a matter of time before Los Angeles communities become more vocal about the illegal smuggling activities taking place in their neighborhoods.

“I really believe in my heart that if conditions in parts of L.A. got to the point they got in Phoenix, people would start thinking about the safety of their families,” Ahr said. “If this were going on in L.A., people would just be dumbfounded.”

Meanwhile, Los Angeles, as a global transportation hub, allows smugglers to disperse immigrants to other areas of the country.

The immigrants discovered Tuesday had been led by coyotes over the border at Nogales, Ariz., agents said, and probably were going to board eastbound flights at LAX. Among the items left behind at the ramshackle house was an airline ticket for a flight from Los Angeles to New York.

Over the last three weeks, illegal immigrants arrested at airports in Newark, N.J., Washington, D.C., New York and Baltimore had flown from Los Angeles, Jeffery said. On April 6, about 70 immigrants who had crossed the border into Arizona were found holed up in a hotel in Inglewood. They too were set to board flights at LAX, he said.

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Times staff writer Andrew Blankstein contributed to this report.