Free Republic

Pedro Sanchez-Garay worked as an Uber driver in Southern California, but he got evicted from his apartment and the money wasn’t rolling in fast enough. So he figured he would broaden his pool of riders. He answered a request on social media for some off-the-books driving — of illegal immigrants. Instructions for each pickup were provided over WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging service run by Facebook. He was promised $1,000 a pop to pick them up just after they crossed the border and drive them north deeper into the interior. It’s the gig economy of the border, or as one observer...

To get a sense of just how out of "the shadows" the vast illegal alien smuggling pipeline to America is, consider the little mention that migrants can now offer Yelp-style reviews for attaining the finest in illegal alien–enabling services, not just in one's choice of smuggling coyote, but in all the vast numbers of choices in NGOs offering shelters and services, according to Michelle Malkin, whose new book, Open Borders: Who's Funding America's Destruction, comes out tomorrow.

Armed smugglers allegedly associated with the Gulf Cartel were responsible for the onslaught of automatic fire that endangered the lives a Border Patrol Marine Unit in early August, as it policed the banks for drug smugglers and human traffickers along the Rio Grande Valley River, in Texas. Department of Homeland Security investigators recently uncovered that it was to prevent the Border Patrol boat from trampling or breaking an underwater pulley line devised by the cartel to transport large quantities of cocaine into the United States, according to a For Official Use Only law enforcement sensitive document obtained by SaraACarter.com... The...

A new study by the non-partisan RAND Corporation helps explain why it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, to ever stop the illicit drug trade: It’s worth tens of billions of dollars per year. Researchers at the think tank wrote in their report that illegal narcotics generate some $150 billion annually, or as much as the amusement and gambling industry generated in 2016. The exhaustive analysis of drug use and spending data contained in the report indicates that there are about 30 million chronic drug users in the U.S. alone as of 2016, with major increases in the number...

A Florida woman who was arrested for pulling a small alligator out of her yoga pants during a traffic stop pleaded guilty to illegally possessing animals and was sentenced to probation, authorities said. The woman, 25-year-old Ariel Machan-Le Quire, was arrested in May when she and 22-year-old Michael Clemons were pulled over by Charlotte County cops after Clemons ran a stop sign, according to police.

Three people have been charged after conspiring to smuggle a 9-year-old boy from Mexico to Texas to be sold, officials say. Elida Moreno, 26, was paid $1,700 to use her son’s birth certificate to smuggle a 9-year-old boy into the United States, officials say. She is a U.S. citizen living in Piedras Negras, Mexico. The boy is believed to have been kidnapped. Officials say Moreno entered the U.S. through Eagle Pass, Texas, where she and the boy stayed in a hotel before taking a shuttle to San Antonio the next day. She’d been asked by a friend’s neighbor to meet...

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — More than two dozen people were arrested last week in connection with a $12 million cigarette smuggling operation based in Fayetteville, authorities said Monday. U.S. Attorney Robert Higdon said Justin Brent Freeman and his wholesale business, FreeCo Inc., at 231 Williams St., served as a hub for the illegal operation. People would pay cash for large quantities of cigarettes at FreeCo and other retailers in North Carolina, including Sam's Club stores in Raleigh, Fayetteville and Goldsboro, and would then pack the cigarettes into rental cars for shipment to Virginia, Higdon said. In Richmond or Alexandria, Va., the...

Full Title: Colombian National Pleads Guilty to Operating an International Fentanyl Trafficking Organization from a Canadian Prison Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, July 12, 2019 Colombian National Pleads Guilty to Operating an International Fentanyl Trafficking Organization from a Canadian Prison A Colombian fentanyl trafficker, who was scheduled to go to trial on Oct. 1, 2019, pleaded guilty earlier today to drug trafficking and money laundering charges as the leader and organizer of an international continuing criminal enterprise while incarcerated in Quebec, Canada.  The enterprise involved distributing fentanyl and other similar substances from Canada and...

Video from the U.S. Coast Guard shows crew members boarding a suspected drug smuggling vessel in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, with one pounding on the hatch until someone inside opened it, reportedly finding over 17,000 pounds of cocaine. Coast Guardsman jumps onto narco-submarine loaded with drugs in Pacific Ocean

One of the men suspected of controlling the smuggling of migrants for the Gulf Cartel was previously arrested by U.S. authorities and released 15 days later on a single immigration charge. The man is considered one of the cartel’s most violent enforcers in Reynosa, Tamaulipas. As Breitbart News exclusively reported, Hector “La Mimi or M-22” Sanchez Rivera is currently a leading enforcer for the Gulf Cartel along with his brother, Ernesto. They are directly responsible for controlling the smuggling of migrants from Gulf Cartel territory in Mexico to South Texas. The duo fostered a reputation for violence and is linked...

Lance Cpls. Byron Darnell Law II and David Javier Salazar-Quintero, based in Camp Pendleton, Calif., were arraigned Monday in federal court on charges of transporting undocumented immigrants “for financial gain,” accused of taking jobs from “recruiters” and following instructions from unknown people in Mexico to make extra cash on the side. ... In this case, the Marines fell under suspicion on July 3 after a Border Patrol agent saw a black vehicle momentarily park in the dirt median of Interstate 8 near Jacumba Hot Springs, Calif. Then, he spotted footprints in the dirt seeming to lead toward the car, according...

A BRIT teacher accidentally killed herself with a lethal overdose after she swallowed a bag of cocaine in a first-class airport lounge while waiting to fly home to Dubai. Victoria Buchanan, 42, ingested the resealable bag when she realised she still had the drug in her possession while drinking a glass of champagne after she checked in with her luggage. The mum-of-three had earlier acquired £200 worth of the Class A drug during a family visit to the UK with her husband Mark who is a shipping company boss. She had £60 worth of cocaine left when she decided to...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. federal court documents show Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and some of his closest advisers were among the targets of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation.</p> <p>A document filed by prosecutors on Tuesday in the Southern District of New York mentions Hernández as part of a group of individuals investigated by the DEA since about 2013 for participating “in large-scale drug-trafficking and money laundering activities relating to the importation of cocaine into the United States”.</p>

The lawyer for Jonathan Keith ''Jack'' Idema said Tuesday that he doesn't think Idema can get a fair trial in an Afghan court. Idema, who is from Fayetteville, has been held in an Afghan jail since his July 5 arrest on charges of kidnapping and torturing Afghan citizens. Two other Americans, Brent Bennett of Fayetteville and Ed Caraballo of New York, are being held with him. Idema has been identified as the leader of the group. He has said he and the others were hunting down terrorists. A hearing in a Kabul court for the three men was set to...

Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.) reacts to a surveillance video that shows heavily armed men escorting migrants into the United States.

Concepcion Malinek's tried to help the immigrants, offering them shelter from trouble in Guatemala, her lawyer said. When they got to the Cicero home where a woman had allegedly “enslaved” Guatemalan immigrants for years, the FBI had to break down every door, a prosecutor said. Inside, agents found “deplorable” conditions. Mold. Cockroaches. Mattresses “all over the place.” And sewage backing up in the basement where Concepcion Malinek allegedly forced the immigrants — one as young as 18 months old — to live. Malinek told the immigrants they couldn’t leave until they paid debts to her worth thousands of dollars, prosecutors...

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials seized 1 million pounds of pork products at the Newark, New Jersey maritime point of entry Friday. The meat is believed to have been smuggled from China, where there is currently an outbreak of the African swine fever (ASF). During a Friday news conference, officials announced the seizure of over 50 shipping containers containing pork products. "Agriculture specialists made a critical interception of these prohibited animal products, and stopped them from entering the US before they could potentially cause grave damage," Troy Miller, director of CBP field operations for the cities of New...

Washington (AFP) - US authorities created a secret database of journalists and activists linked to a caravan of Central Americans who tried to enter the US last year from Mexico, NBC reported. In some cases authorities flagged their passports for alerts, said the San Diego, California affiliate of NBC. It cited documents leaked to it by a source in the Department of Homeland Security who requested not to be named. It said these documents list people who officials thought should be screened at the US-Mexico border. They included 10 journalists, seven of them US citizens, an American lawyer and 47...

WASHINGTON - Jewish-American Robert Levinson was not included in a prisoner exchange with Iran that came as the UN nuclear watchdog confirmed Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal and the West rolled back sanctions. Iran on Saturday released five Americans it was holding in its prisons or in detention, four of them as part of a prison swap which included the release of Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post journalist detained on espionage charges since 2014. The exchange comes on "implementation day" of the sanctions relief for nuclear restrictions deal Iran concluded last year with the United States and five other...

The Trump administration has drafted plans to strip key authorities from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, senior administration officials said on Friday, an acknowledgment that the agency has all but abandoned its legacy of fighting liquor and tobacco smugglers. The A.T.F. traces its roots to Eliot Ness and the Prohibition-era federal agents made famous in the movie “The Untouchables.” But the modern A.T.F. has focused its stagnant budget on violent crime and bombings, while tobacco smuggling — a little-known crime that costs the government billions in lost taxes each year — goes largely unenforced.