Sharp rise in Chinese arrests at U.S. border

[Batmaniac]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...25.story?page=1

 

Found this article today. We had a border patrol encounter on vacation that I thought was a little silly. My opinion at the time was "come on! they aren't looking for Chinese girls!" Well maybe they are. Careful driving that southwest route, boys, or going into South Texas which is specifically mentioned. Take her visa, I-94 or Green Card. Iin our incident, our AOS appointment letter worked for the officer, fortunately. Don't be like Batmaniac who thought that good stuff would be safer at home rather than on a 2.5 week road trip.

 

By Sebastian Rotella

October 5, 2009

 

Reporting from Nogales, Ariz. - Amid an overall drop in arrests of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S-Mexico border, an intriguing anomaly has cast a new light on human smuggling: Authorities report an almost tenfold spike in the number of Chinese people caught in the southern Arizona desert, the busiest smuggling corridor on the international line.

 

The Border Patrol in the Tucson sector has arrested at least 261 Chinese border-crossers this year, compared with an annual average of 32 during the last four years, officials said.

 

"They are the main [non-Mexicans] we catch," said field operations supervisor Juventino Pacheco of the patrol's international liaison unit in Nogales. "Lately we have been catching more Chinese than Central Americans."

 

When agents find Chinese migrants -- hiding in gulches, perhaps, or huddled in smugglers' vehicles -- they often request help from Dean Delap, the sector's only Mandarin-speaking agent. He taught and studied in China, but had not expected that to prove valuable in Nogales.

 

"Some are cooperative," Delap said. "Some are scared. They've just been arrested, they are in a new place. I put them at ease."

 

Chinese remain a small fraction of the overall number processed at the Nogales station -- which guards 31 miles abutting Nogales, Mexico.

 

The Tucson sector, where the Nogales station is located, recorded about 226,000 apprehensions this year. That is a 24% decline from the last fiscal year -- reflecting the impact of both the U.S. economic crisis and tougher border enforcement, officials said.

 

The great majority of those arrested were Mexicans. Chinese belong to a category known in the Border Patrol as OTMs: other than Mexicans. And they are big business for smuggling gangs that increasingly have overlapped with Mexico's violent drug mafias.

 

Highest fees

 

Mexicans typically pay smugglers about $1,500 for help crossing the sun-seared landscape, which is as dangerous as it is majestic. The fees for Central Americans and South Americans often reach $6,000. A group of Haitians, intercepted a few years ago in Tucson after three nights spent hiking in circles in a canyon, had coughed up $10,000; another $10,000 was to have been paid upon arrival in the Chicago area.

 

The Chinese -- nearly all of them from Fujian province -- pay the most. They often have to work off debts of $30,000 to $70,000 over several years as indentured servants in the sweatshops and kitchens of New York and other cities.

 

Sophisticated Asian mafias organize intricate journeys to the U.S. A typical route leads from Beijing to Rome to Caracas, Venezuela, to Mexico City to the border, according to Matthew Allen, chief agent of the Phoenix office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

 

"It's much more elaborate" than smuggling Latin Americans, Allen said. "Waiting in hotel rooms, calls on cellphones, code words. . . . The trend [in increased arrests] stands out as apprehensions are going down overall."

 

But the uptick in arrests of Chinese does not necessarily reflect a major influx from that country, officials said. Statistical barometers are imperfect.

 

High-priced smugglers are better at dodging defenses, so it's hard to assess the correlation between arrests, crossing rates and the number who succeed in illegally immigrating.

 

Nothing new

 

Chinese smuggling made headlines at its peak in the early 1990s, when flotillas carrying would-be immigrants swarmed the coasts of Southern California, Mexico and Central America.

 

Ten people died in June 1993 when the ship Golden Venture ran aground in New York carrying 286 immigrants, more than the total captured this year at the Arizona border.

 

A crackdown at sea and tighter political asylum rules reduced the flow.

 

Today, Asian smugglers favor air routes, exploiting favorable visa policies for Chinese travelers in countries including Ecuador, Honduras and Venezuela, which are hubs for their travel to Mexico, officials said.

 

U.S. investigators have gathered intelligence about thousands of Chinese who have settled temporarily in Ecuador with the intention of sneaking into the United States, according to a high-ranking federal official who requested anonymity when discussing the international surveillance.

 

"The smugglers are attuned to nuances in South American visa policies, and will adapt," Allen said.

 

The number of Chinese apprehended along the Southwest boundary fluctuates. Borderwide arrests hit 2,060 in the 2006 fiscal year, dipped to near 700 during the next two years, and then rose to 1,221 as of August, according to the Border Patrol.

 

The patrol's McAllen sector in south Texas, a high-volume corridor for non-Mexicans because of its relative proximity to Central America, led all sectors with at least 667 arrests of Chinese by August, officials say.

 

But proportionally, the Tucson area experienced the most dramatic surge.

 

One reason for that, officials said: the convergence of drugs and illegal immigrants in the Sonora-Arizona area. The dominant drug mafia in the region, the Sinaloa cartel, "saw an opportunity to get into Chinese smuggling," said Border Patrol spokesman Mario Escalante.

 

The evolving alliance between traffickers of drugs and of immigrants -- once separate specialties -- is complex. According to investigators, drug lords use their firepower to control turf and tax others for the use of border corridors, known in Spanish as plazas, charging $50,000 to $100,000 a week.

 

"The drug trafficking organizations in the plazas control who smuggles, what they smuggle, where they smuggle," Allen said.

 

Overlapping fields

 

At times, when drug mafias are at war or when moving drug loads is difficult, muscling in on the human smuggling racket brings easy profit and less risk, Pacheco said.

 

And whereas violent retaliation is common among drug traffickers after a big bust, it's less so among smugglers whose immigrants are caught.

 

"Losing Chinese, you lose money but not an investment upfront," Pacheco said. "They don't buy the Chinese, they charge them."

 

Nonetheless, Allen said, "the drug and alien smuggling groups are still separate entities. Once human smugglers make it into the U.S. with their loads, there is not coordination."

 

Chinese immigrants intercepted by the Border Patrol have often spent months on the road.

 

"Some speak a few words of Spanish," Delap said. "Most of them communicate with hand gestures and body language."

 

Delap, who majored in political science and minored in Chinese at Brigham Young University, taught English in Yunnan and Xinjiang provinces eight years ago. He has been with the Border Patrol two years.

 

He sees the chance to use his knowledge of Chinese language and culture as one humanitarian aspect of the Border Patrol, which frequently rescues immigrants from the desert.

 

Although his conversations with Chinese immigrants focus on basic information, it is clear that his presence is reassuring.

 

"A lot of times at the end of the shift when I have to go, they realize that and a lot of questions come flooding out: Where are they going, when will they be leaving the detention facility, what will happen," he said. "I explain the best I can."

[Guest Pommey]

what can we say, Latino illegals good, chinese bad

 

anglo America always hate chinese moe than any other ,its a history thing.

They think we are lowest people,its pure racism.

 

sorry i post this on robs login.

 

but things will change now china will lead world soon, hope not retribution and be the same to westenj/usa and deny you all visa in future.

[chengdu4me]

Now that airlines offer a direct flight from Shanghai to Mexico City, I think that there will a lot more of this.

[Kyle]

[dnoblett]

Kind of reminds me of Cheech Marin's "Born In East L.A.", I believe the term was O.T.M. or Other Than Mexican.

[Randy W]

World domination is the answer. Let someone ELSE be the low life

[shadeOgray]

I am from Tucson originally. I use to leave water all over the desert in rock piles marked with blue flagged stakes. Can¡¯t stand to see people dying in the desert to get here.

I personally think trying to get here via the Mexico boarder is stupid but you shouldn¡¯t have to die from it either.

[Lovebane]

I am from Tucson originally. I use to leave water all over the desert in rock piles marked with blue flagged stakes. Can¡¯t stand to see people dying in the desert to get here.

I personally think trying to get here via the Mexico boarder is stupid but you shouldn¡¯t have to die from it either.

Sounds like Desert Survivor Minesweeper.

 

World domination is the answer. Let someone ELSE be the low life

 

ELE is the true answer. Equality for all.

[whome?]

what can we say, Latino illegals good, chinese bad

 

anglo America always hate chinese moe than any other ,its a history thing.

They think we are lowest people,its pure racism.

 

sorry i post this on robs login.

 

but things will change now china will lead world soon, hope not retribution and be the same to westenj/usa and deny you all visa in future.

no where did the article say lation illegals were good and chinese were bad...it pointed out a shift in human smuggling patterns.

[NewDay2006]

what can we say, Latino illegals good, chinese bad

 

anglo America always hate chinese moe than any other ,its a history thing.

They think we are lowest people,its pure racism.

 

sorry i post this on robs login.

 

but things will change now china will lead world soon, hope not retribution and be the same to westenj/usa and deny you all visa in future.

 

I don't agree with these comments for different reasons. One, I would say that 1000's of Chinese in a Latin country is a little strange and they would stand out of the general population and thier reasons might be obvious and they are easier to track since one (Immigrations)might anticipate thier motive for being in that particular place in the world.

 

I don't think (White Americans) think Chinese are the lowest people.

 

I'm not sure China will lead the world even though they are growing strong. Don't count the the USA out of any race.

Edited October 7, 2009 by NewDay2006 (see edit history)

[Stepbrow]

Somebody should have gotten a big mop slap for not having his wife's documents with them.

[Batmaniac]

Somebody should have gotten a big mop slap for not having his wife's documents with them.

 

I get enough! She's the smart one for having the letter with us.

[Stepbrow]

Hey Mike, that 's what you get for marrying such a smart gal. You are a lucky guy.

[fineart]

They are unlucky people. In order to get to their dreamed land, either for temporarily making a fortune or permanently living in USA, they need to pay for the price of possible death during the procedure of sneaking into USA. If they have very good life in their country, most of them will not take this risk to make a fortune this way.

 

Unfairness exists in any country in any era. In China, it is never less. The fact is Chinese people have much more right and freedom than the past feudalistic China. Yet, the legal system doesn't always protect the vulnerable groups in society. I agree with many people who view China from both the light side and the dark side.

 

My aunt is a doctor. When her son graduated from college, she bought him a fancy car as a gift. She is a wise lady and she has tried not to buy him this big-priced toy when he was in college so as not to spoil him rotten, and not to make his poor classmates feel bad. My cousin did describe several times to us how poor some of his classmates were with great sympythy. He gave his clothes, his shoes and other things to those poor students. He said he always tried to avoid showing any privilege implication before the poor students. He understood that those students were financially poor, but it didn't mean they were spiritually poor. He doesn't forget that though he is lucky, there are many unlucky people there. This makes his mom happy. My aunt told us, some of the doctors really lost their conscience. Some of the doctors took some Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives' bribe and just prescribe the bribed medicine to patients, even though sometimes these medicine are not much to treat the patients' disease. There are some brave and smart patients protest when the doctors prescribe the medicine that are exaggeratingly expensive or not much to help with their illness. But most patients swallow their discontent and doublt. Such as when their eyes is infected by mild conjunctivitis, a little bottle of eyedrop that costs 10 RMB is enough to heal their disease, but the doctor prescribe Selenium Oral Liquid along with eyedrop, saying the oral liquid is helpful. Actually, many things are helpful, and there is no need to spend much money buying so-called helpful oral liquid that is not necessary for eyes from this doctor. This contributes to make some doctors' wallet more full, yet, make the patients lose more money that they don't deserve losing.

 

When I was in college here, once teacher played a vedio which repeated the close-up scene of a bitter exhausted Chinese man's face who sneaked to USA by ship, along with the English narration. The vedio was about how many people sneaked into USA for the past years but it only gave clear close-up to this Chinese man. I could feel several students examining my face. I didn't feel the vedio was a shame on me, instead, I felt, if I could, I would help him. My expression should make those who stared at me disappointed. I had my cool and my pride when sitting there. What I want to say to those students who might contempt my race is that: You are lucky---does this give you the privilege to laugh at the Unlucky?---though sneaking is sure not right.

 

Whenever I see the dark side of China, I felt very sad. It takes a long long road for China to grow up to be a jural society. Actually, Hu and Wen, in my eyes, have devoted a great deal to make China proceed to a jural country, though China has a lot more to do.

Edited October 9, 2009 by fineart (see edit history)

[Guest Tony n Terrific]

I do not think that any illegal Immigrant wants to run into Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa County Arizona. He has the rep of being the toughest Sheriff in the US. Regardless if you are legal or not.

He is being sued now for being too good at his job. The Feds have started an investigation on him and his department for for violating constitutional rights of illegal Immigrants.

 

http://news.aol.com/article/sheriff-joe-ar...imits-on/711589