Posted on 02/04/2010 8:33:00 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
HOUSTON — Raids on 14 illegal bus companies here have shed light on a seedy underground system that transported illegal immigrants all over the country and that sometimes held them captive until their relatives paid exorbitant fares, federal law enforcement officials said Thursday.
Using minivans, the companies were carrying hundreds of illegal immigrants from Mexico to cities across the United States, taking back roads and traveling primarily at night to avoid the authorities, according to criminal complaints filed in Federal District Court. Twenty-two people were arrested earlier this week on charges of using their businesses to transport illegal immigrants.
The bus companies worked exclusively with smuggling operations, officials said. The owners paid commissions of up to $300 for each passenger to smugglers who had brought the immigrants across the Mexican border. Then they held the immigrants in safe houses for days, often under guard, until they loaded them onto vans, according to court documents.
Agents said that at one of the bus companies raided this week, Super Express Van Tours, they found the operators had used pit bulls and armed guards to keep the immigrants from leaving a safe house next door to the office.
“These were not legitimate transportation companies like Greyhound,” said John Connolly, the deputy special agent in charge in Houston for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The companies also charged far more than legitimate carriers would for the trips, asking them to pay as much as $650 for a ride to cities like Los Angeles, Atlanta and Miami. The fee was usually paid at the end of the journey by relatives of the immigrants, officials said. In some cases the drivers refused to release the passenger if the family could not pay, the complaints said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The smugglees needn’t have worried. Unless, maybe, it was Joe Arpaio’s office, these folks could have dashed in to any police station and ICE would have been none the wiser.
So - is this the same outfit running buses out of California and Arizona that was shut down 3 years ago?
Hmmm...not a bad business decision. I understand we have ambulance companies here in AZ that follow a similar model.
A US ambulance driver transporting a patient to the border finds himself expected to pay an extra fee for the transfer. Company policy is to bring the patient back to Phoenix, or Tucson, or wherever the point of origin was.
This is nothing compared to the Federal Bus Company in Washington that seems intnent on driving us all off the cliff.
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