DRUGS, GUNS & PEOPLE
Columbus case raises concerns traffic is on the upswing
There are a few things you can count on along the Southwest border with Mexico. People and drugs move north. Guns and U.S. dollars move south. Josias Garcia, 24, from the New Mexico border town of Columbus, and Eduardo Chavez, 20, an American citizen residing across the border in Palomas, Mexico, are facing charges that could put them in prison for life for their alleged roles in that illegal two-way flow. A 20-count federal indictment says the two were trying to smuggle guns and ammunition into Mexico, and also accuses them of holding three Mexican nationals hostage in a Columbus trailer home until their families could come up with thousands of dollars to pay Garcia and Chavez to smuggle them to Española, Denver and Pennsylvania. Garcia and Chavez, who have pleaded not guilty, are considered to be small players, but court records hint they were not acting alone. And there has been an uptick in illegal crossings along the border and in the Columbus area. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Nielsen told a Senate committee last week that Mexican drug cartels get
$500 million a year from illegal human smuggling operations.
“To be clear — human smuggling operations are lining the pockets of transnational criminals. They are not humanitarian endeavors,” she said, according to news reports. “Smugglers prioritize profit over people. And when aliens pay them to get here, they are contributing $500 million a year — or more — to groups that are fueling greater violence and instability in America and the region.”
The $500 million is likely overstated, because it is based on an extrapolation that assumes that every illegal immigrant apprehended here has paid about $8,000 to a carteloperated smuggling operation.
But there is no question the cartels are playing a role in human as well as drug trafficking.
Some cartels, such as Los Zetas, which operates on the lower Rio Grande, are directly involved in transporting people from Central America at a cost of $8,000 per person.
Los Zetas’ smuggling operations have been linked to several of the semi-trucks found in Texas with up to 100 people hidden inside, including one truckload in which 10 people died last year and another that claimed the lives of 19 people.
The Juárez and Sinaloa cartels, which are the most active cartels operating along the New Mexico border, don’t appear to be directly involved in moving people into the U.S. illegally, but they both collect fees from smugglers to allow their illegal human smuggling operations in border towns those cartels control.
The number of people who have crossed the border into the U.S. illegally has increased in recent months, with more than 50,000 detained in the month of May by the U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Customs Border Protection.
Homeland Security says money paid by illegal immigrants or their families is split between smugglers, stash house operators and people who transport them to their final destinations.
How much money the cartels earn from human smuggling varies but is substantially less than the billions of dollars a year they make smuggling drugs into the United States.
Meanwhile, weapons moving south are wreaking their own toll in Mexico.
With a population about one-third the size of the U.S. population, Mexico recorded more than 29,000 homicides last year — compared with 17,000 in the United States in 2016.
Serious firepower
Chavez and Garcia were allegedly preparing to move some serious firepower across the border.
On the morning of Nov. 8, 2017, the two men drove a gray van into the United States through the Columbus Port of Entry.
They didn’t know that Homeland Security agents were monitoring Garcia’s border crossings, because the van he was driving was registered to another man, who also owned a pickup truck in which federal agents had found 124 pounds of marijuana several weeks earlier.
The role of the registered owner of the two vehicles isn’t clear in court reports, but his last name is the same as that of several senior members of the Juárez Cartel.
According to federal court filings, a few hours after Chavez and Garcia drove across the border, a source called Homeland Security agents with a tip that Garcia and Chavez were in the process of purchasing 47 high-capacity rifle magazines, 2,000 rounds of ammunition and an AK-47 assault-style rifle from a gun store in El Paso.
Agents set up surveillance and watched Garcia and Chavez leave the store carrying several bags and a rifle case that they put into the van.
Later in the day, Garcia and Chavez bought another 2,000 rounds of ammunition and two AK-47 magazines from a gun store in Las Cruces.
The agents then set up surveillance on N.M. 9, which runs parallel to the border, suspecting that the two would
try to avoid a Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 10 as they headed west to Columbus.
The agents were right and followed the van on its way to Columbus, where it approached the Port of Entry.
Garcia and Chavez changed their plans, however, and headed back into Columbus after it appeared that U.S. Border agents planned to stop and inspect the van before it entered Mexico.
Homeland Security agents found the vehicle on South Ohio Street in Columbus where Garcia had a trailer home — and where they unloaded the gun, magazines and ammunition.
The two men, still unaware of the surveillance, then drove the van back to the Port of Entry, where it was searched with nothing found, and they headed into Mexico.
Agents, meanwhile, obtained a search warrant by telephone and served it on Garcia’s trailer home.
As expected, they found a Zastava M70 semiautomatic rifle, 39 high-capacity rifle magazines, one 60-round capacity rifle magazine, 4,070 rounds of ammunition and a brick of marijuana.
And something they didn’t expect: three Mexican men being held hostage.
Each of the three men told federal agents the same story.
They had arrived in Palomas and made contact with a human smuggler. They then illegally crossed into the United States through the desert, where they made contact with two men they identified as Garcia and Chavez, who took them to the trailer.
According to court records, the men said they were told they would be shot if they left the trailer and said that when Garcia and Chavez left, they heard what sounded like a chain being used to lock the front door.
At one point, they heard Garcia or Chavez on a cellphone explaining to someone (unidentified) what they were doing with the three men and the demands they were making.
Over the next few days Garcia and Chavez would drop off food and water at the trailer.
According to a criminal complaint, Garcia and Chavez demanded payment to get the men to their desired destinations.
For the man who wanted to go to Denver, they wanted his family to pay $5,000. Another man wanted to go to Pennsylvania, and Chavez and Garcia said they wanted $7,000. The price for Española: $5,000.
The Española-bound man told agents that Garcia managed to make contact with a family member and that $5,000 was wired to a bank account provided by Garcia.
According to court records, they each said they had been threatened with serious harm or death if members of their families didn’t send the money.
The three Mexican nationals are being detained in federal custody as material witnesses.
Chavez and Garcia are being held without bond.