Sri Lankans smuggled along 'Guatemala Corridor'
June 29 – (Kastane News) - A Texas couple arrested June 21 in connection with smuggling and harboring Sri Lankans and other undocumented immigrants were denied bail when they made their initial appearance today before a US judge.
(Left) Migrants from Latin America and South Asia spill out of a truck that was heading to the US after being detected at a checkpoint in Mexico's southern Chiapas state. (Source: Chiapas State Attorney General) Alejandro Gomez-Gaona and Irys Deniesse Nino arrested by US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) appeared before Judge Felix Recio in the Southern District of Texas to face charges. The two were arrested when ICE agents found 16 undocumented immigrants trafficked from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Sri Lanka in their Brownsville duplex. They are believed to have made their way across the Mexican border and were headed to Houston, a popular destination for illegal migrants. Gomez-Gaona and Nino were among 2,400 arrested nationwide when ICE launched a seven-day enforcement surge in May dubbed “Cross Check” in which authorities targeted convicted criminal undocumented immigrants throughout the US. “The results of this operation underscore ICE’s ongoing focus on arresting those convicted criminal aliens who prey upon our communities and tracking down fugitives who game our nation’s immigration system,” said ICE Director John Morton in a press release. “This targeted enforcement operation is a direct result of excellent teamwork among law enforcement agencies who share a commitment to protect public safety.” A growing number of Sri Lankans and Indians have been nabbed in the past two years while using Mexico as the transit point for illegal crossing into the US. ICE officials suspect they are using the ‘Guatemala corridor,’ which is emerging as a hub of human and drug smuggling. After Latin Americans, South Asians, mainly Indians, are the largest group of migrants caught crossing the Southwest border, some of them paying as much as $30,000 to smuggling cartels to take them from Guatemala across Mexico into the US. In January, Mexican authorities found six Sri Lankans and four Nepalese among 219 migrants squeezed into a trailer truck in the southern state of Chiapas. The others were from Central America. The recent arrests are seen as a continuing trend in trans-continental illegal immigration passing through the ‘Guatemala corridor.’ In June 2010, seven Sri Lankans and three Indians were among 60 arrested when Chiapas police stopped a truck heading for the US border. The immigrants were found to be suffering from dehydration when the truck was stopped at a checkpoint in the city of Tuxtla Guitierrez, the capital of Chiapas. The other immigrants arrested were Salvadorans (30), Guatemalans (15) and Hondurans (5). Again, in May of this year, 2 trucks carrying 513 illegal migrants were apprehended at the same checkpoint. Among them were 12 Indians and 3 Nepalese, some of them suffering from dehydration after traveling for hours clinging to cargo ropes strung inside the containers to keep them upright as the trucks bounced along from the Guatemalan border. Some of the travelers were crammed in on the floor of the trucks which had holes bored in their roofs to provide air in the stifling vehicles, reports said. Sri Lankans are required to have a visa to enter Guatemala but Indians have been allowed to enter the country without a visa since 2009, after diplomatic and commercial relations were established between the two nations and India offered a $10 million credit line and other assistance. (Copyright Kastane News) The 'Corridor' from Guatemala to the USA
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The U.S./Mexican Border Has Become a Sieve of Death
By Martin Brass Soldier of Fortune Magazine Illegals Face a Gauntlet of Doom: The Border Patrol Faces Dopers, Terrorists, and the Desperate Victims of Coyotes. The 2,100 mile southern border of the U.S., with its treacherous mountain ranges, canyons, rivers and deserts, has become an uncontrollable stretch of violence, death, rape and exploitation. Over a decade ago, SOF rode with Border Patrol Agents in Arizona when the situation already seemed out of hand. One of those agents, now retired, recently contacted SOF with a disturbing and frustrated update, reflecting the deterioration of the Mexico-United States border. "In my career, spanning three decades, many of my friends and partners were killed on duty, enforcing immigration laws, and are listed on our honor rolls. Their deaths, and devotion to duty, are beyond politicians' ability to understand, it seems, and are without meaning. This past year the Patrol has arrested a million illegals, with twelve to fourteen million in country, home free. Mexican military incursions, escorting narcotics, are commonplace. Rival alien smuggling organizations thrive in Arizona, and politicians pander, and grovel to Mexico's demands, in a time of war." Continue Reading Truck trailers such as this are used to smuggle scores of undocumented immigrants at a time across the Mexican border into the US edit.
In 2009, nine out of a total 112 Sri Lankans deported to their home country had criminal records.
Guatemalan officials estimate 300 to 500 undocumented immigrants cross the border each day into Mexico, paying double what they did two years ago, as much as US$10,000 for the hope of gaining work in the United States. Migrants from Latin America and Asia stand in line after after being detected by an X-ray equipment inside two trucks that were heading to the US at a checkpoint near Tuxtla Gutierrez, in Mexico's southern Chiapas state, May 17, 2011. ck here to edit.
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