Free Republic

During a 911 call Sunday, a wounded smuggler revealed tantalizing familiarity with the shooting of a Pinal County Sheriff’s deputy, the sheriff said Friday. The caller — suspected of being a smuggler because he had strap marks on his shoulders — called 911 Sunday evening after he and a partner were shot while walking up a smuggling trail in southwestern Pinal County. He and the partner died in a remote area before officers could find him. While trying to explain his location to a dispatcher the suspected smuggler said in Spanish he was “Right here where they shot the sheriff.”...

...Drug traffickers are getting so much bolder and creative that a man recently was snared in South Texas dressed as a sheriff's deputy and driving a pickup outfitted with emergency lights and painted to look convincingly official. ...The truck caught the attention of border agents last week who noticed the decals were a bit different than those used on the Webb County Sheriff's Office vehicles, said Jason Darling, spokesman for the Border Patrol's Laredo Sector. “There were subtle differences,” Darling said. “They were able to take one look at it and know something was out of place.” Stuffed in the...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4, 2009 – Iraqi forces, working with U.S. advisors, wounded and captured a suspected terrorist and arrested an alleged weapons smuggler in recent operations, military officials reported. Elements of the Iraqi special operations forces detained a suspected terrorist who was wanted for engaging in sectarian violence in Baghdad yesterday. He was armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, and when approached the Iraqi soldiers with the intent to fire, they shot and wounded him. The elite counter-terrorism force was operating under the authority of a warrant issued by the Central Investigative Court of Karkh. Iraqi soldiers rendered medical aid...

An alleged drugs dealer appeared in court on Friday after "holding out" for more than two weeks before finally going to the toilet. Damien Ankrah, aged 27, was arrested on July 13 on suspicion of transporting heroin by placing the drugs in a condom and swallowing them. But it was almost August before he went to the toilet and police had to use new legislation to get the evidence. The exceptional effort led Dyfed-Powys Police to warn drugs dealers not to try the same thing. Ankrah was arrested in Haverfordwest and detained at Pembroke Dock police station, where officers told...

MEXICO CITY — Mexico says it found nearly one ton of cocaine hidden inside frozen shark carcasses. Prosecutors says hundreds of packages stuffed in the bellies of dozens of dead sharks seized in the Gulf port of Progreso contained 1,965 pounds (893 kilograms) of cocaine. The Attorney General's Office says the sharks were found in two containers on Tuesday. The containers had been shipped from Costa Rica. There was no immediate information on its intended destination.

Given away by bird poop on his socks, fancy pants here was charged Tuesday in California with smuggling exotic Asian songbirds from Vietnam into the United States by strapping them onto his legs. Droppings on Sony Dong's socks and feathers peeking out from under a pant leg tipped off a Los Angeles International Airport inspector in March, who arrested the 46-year-old. Dong wore an elaborate set of leggings with buttoned cloth wrappings, which held more than a dozen birds (pictured), the Associated Press reported. Inspectors had flagged Dong for inspection because he had abandoned a suitcase of 18 birds in...

Two California men were indicted today on federal charges that they illegally smuggled Asian songbirds into the country, most recently last month when one of the defendants, returning from a trip to Vietnam, was found with 14 live birds strapped to his legs. As seen in the below evidence photo, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at Los Angeles International Airport discovered the birds under the pants of Sony Dong. According to a Department of Justice press release, CBP agents inspected Dong and "found bird feathers and droppings on his socks, as well as birds' tail feathers visible under his...

A massive earth-moving project is transforming Smuggler's Gulch near San Diego from a narrow canyon used by cattle thieves, bandits and illegal immigrants into a plugged breach. Reporting from San Diego -- Smuggler's Gulch lived up to its infamous name. For a century, the narrow canyon leading into California from Mexico provided cover for cattle thieves and opium dealers, bandits and booze runners. More recently, it has hidden thousands of illegal immigrants on their journey north, sealing its place in border lore. Now, it's a fading memory. The canyon has been all but wiped off the landscape, its steep walls...

BISBEE — An employee of American Border Patrol, a non-governmental organization, was threatened on Thursday by a suspected smuggler near the U.S.-Mexico border near Palominas. At about 2:15 p.m. Thursday, Mike Christie was driving a quad on the group’s ranch toward Border Monument Road on his way to Highway 92. Christie saw a white pickup truck heading north and he suspected the driver was involved in nefarious activity. “As he approached it, the fellow turned around and went back to the border,” said Glenn Spencer, president of American Border Patrol. A short time later, the man revved the engine of...

PHOENIX (Reuters) - A Mexican smuggler responsible for an accident that killed 10 illegal immigrants in the Arizona desert two years ago was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison. Adan Pineda-Doval, 22, received the maximum sentence from Judge Stephen McNamee for the deadly incident in which he flipped over a vehicle packed with illegal immigrants while trying to flee Border Patrol agents near Yuma, Arizona. In October, Pineda-Doval was convicted of 10 counts of transporting illegal immigrants resulting in death, one count of placing lives in jeopardy and one count of re-entry after deportation. "This incident speaks to the...

SAN DIEGO – Border Patrol agents shot a suspected migrant smuggler early Wednesday in a predawn raid on a San Ysidro motel. The injured man was hit in the leg, police said. He was taken to a San Diego hospital where his wound was deemed not life-threatening. The incident began shortly after 3:30 a.m. when several uniformed Border Patrol agents entered Room 252 of the Economy Inn on Via de San Ysidro off Interstate 5, said San Diego police Capt. Cesar Solis. That's where they confronted two Latino men, one of whom was known to have a history of immigrant...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - An Irish woman who crossed a breached border into Gaza with her daughter said Wednesday that border guards were preventing them from returning to Egypt. Treasa Ni Cheannabhain said she and her daughter, an Egyptian national, entered Gaza on Saturday, more than a week after Hamas militants knocked down the border wall. As hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flooded into Egypt, Ni Cheannabhain, 56, said she sneaked into Gaza with her 19-year-old daughter, Naisrin el-Safty, to distribute money to needy Gazans. Egyptian guards resealed the border Sunday, ending the 12-day breach. Ni Cheannabhain said she...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE HAMMER — Soldiers from Company B, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, captured 13 suspected insurgents during a nighttime air assault mission in Sayafiyah, a small village outside of Salman Pak, Nov. 24. One of the detainees was a high value individual (HVI), who was a member of al-Qaida in Iraq wanted for weapons smuggling and financing attacks on Coalition forces in Salman Pak and Al Ja’ara. “According to our intelligence, the insurgent we apprehended was an expert bomb maker and VBID (vehicle borne improvised explosive device) maker,” said 1st Lt. Matthew Barwick, from Lanham, Md., fire support...

If convicted of the marijuana-related charges, he faces up to 40 years in prison EL PASO — An admitted Mexican drug smuggler shot by a pair of U.S. Border Patrol agents who were convicted in the shooting made his first appearance on marijuana charges Friday in federal court. Handcuffed and wearing a bulletproof vest, Osvaldo Aldrete Davila was escorted to the federal courthouse Friday by two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents. He declined to speak with reporters as he walked the short distance from the jail and did not speak in court except to acknowledge that he understood the charges....

WASHINGTON, July 27, 2007 – Coalition forces captured four suspected terrorists believed to receive support from within Iran in a pre-dawn raid in a village in Iraq’s Diyala province today. One of the four is a highly sought operative believed to be a senior leader in a weapons-smuggling network, military officials reported. The captured terrorists are suspected of facilitating the transport of weapons and personnel from Iran into Iraq. They are also believed to have facilitated the flow of deadly, armor-piercing explosively formed projectiles to be used against coalition forces. "Coalition troops remain relentless in our pursuit of those terrorists...

MEXICO CITY — It was the largest seizure of cash in the history of drug enforcement: $207 million, mostly in crisp $100 bills, stuffed into walls, closets and suitcases in the Mexico City home of a Chinese-born businessman. Zhenli Ye Gon told The Associated Press that most of the money belonged to Mexico's ruling party. He said party officials delivered it last summer in duffel bags stuffed with $5 million apiece and threatened to kill him unless he guarded their cash. In a statement Sunday night, the Mexican government called his tale "a perverse blackmail attempt" aimed at getting himself...

Iraq raid nabs al-Qaida smuggler BAGHDAD April 21 (UPI) -- Iraqi forces reportedly captured a reputed al-Qaida commander in a raid in Nineveh Province, the Multi National Forces headquarters announced Saturday. The identity of the high-value prisoner was not released but he was described as a mid-level al-Qaida member involved in smuggling insurgents into Iraq from Syria. The MNF said the capture was made Friday in the village of Fadiliyah by Iraqi forces who swept in by air early in the morning. There was some resistance from a sentry; however, he was wounded and captured. Elsewhere in Iraq, the MNF...

A Mexican man who led authorities on a high-speed chase in an SUV hauling illegal immigrants and nearly 700 pounds of marijuana was sentenced to more than 19 years in state prison. Jovanni Mendoza, 26, of Tijuana, was sentenced Friday in federal court. He was convicted earlier this year of 10 felony counts of smuggling aliens and drugs. More than two dozen U.S. Border Patrol agents showed up in court to urge a stiff sentence for Mendoza, saying he was suspected of making many dangerous, high-speed runs in San Diego County during his decade-long smuggling career. Mendoza had at least...

A Mexican drug addict who smuggled immigrants was sentenced to three years in prison yesterday for triggering a hoax that prompted a national security alert, a coast-to-coast manhunt and fears that terrorists would detonate a nuclear bomb in Boston. José Ernesto Beltran Quiñonez, 34, apologized in San Diego federal court during the sentencing for falsely telling a 911 operator in January 2005 that two Iraqi men and four Chinese chemists were awaiting an atomic bomb.

SAN DIEGO – The leader of a ring responsible for smuggling more than 100 undocumented immigrants into the United States through San Diego's East County was sentenced Monday to 15 years and eight months in federal prison. Armando Rangel-Rodriguez was convicted March 17 on 10 counts of bringing in illegal aliens for financial gain. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Thomas Whelan. According to court documents, Rangel-Rodriguez's arrest was the result of an in-depth investigation by the Border Patrol into alien smuggling in the Jacumba and Boulevard areas of San Diego County. At least nine drivers who smuggled aliens...