Mobile Phones To Support Frontier Traffic

Eight men were charged in an unusual place that researchers say a new emphasis on tactics, where immigrant smugglers will never cross the border from Mexico - and instead use their mobile phones close to the tops of the mountains, barking instructions to their customers in real time, how to navigate each stage of the trek the wilderness in the United States
Mobile Phones To Support Frontier Traffic
The defendants were part of a network of smuggling immigrants of the first removed the US-Mexico border, which exclusively use cell phones, employs none of the commonly used walking guides to lead groups through the border, Derek Benner said, US Immigration and Customs officer in charge of special application investigations in San Diego. Arrests were made Tuesday and Wednesday in Los Angeles.

As a rule, the smugglers will use to guide your foot, but mobile phones are turning more often in areas where mountain peaks afford sweeping views of Mexico, the United States. Scouts to keep customers well-traveled paths and away from the border police.

U.S. authorities say they discovered the Coyotes again last year, or more often as cell phone coverage is expanding share of our country and forget less than $ 50 phones are widely available.

"The technology is now the guide, as opposed to someone who try to get him back to Mexico in the Border Patrol to stop them," Border Patrol Chief Mike Fisher said in an interview.

Since the U.S. authorities are trying to get a handle on how commonly used in mobile phones and so smuggling rings to adopt them, they face new challenges. They can no longer pump the foot guides with valuable information like, where they walk, where they hide, how they present themselves and the border guards, who are working in Mexico.Mobile Phones To Support Frontier Traffic

It is also more difficult to prosecute charges of smuggling, because the guides are out of reach, south of the border.

The probe culminated in the federal complaint Wednesday started on Jacumba open a miserable village of about 500 people in a street about three blocks of abandoned businesses, a general store and an old motel. The city about 75 miles east of San Diego has become a popular corridor for illegal crossing after the suppression of the 1990 border cities has pushed migrants into remote areas.

In 2001, terrorist attacks, the residents could easily walk across the border from Jacuma, a poor Mexican town about the same size. Bollards have been erected fence close a few years ago made from illegally crossing more difficult, but use the immigrants' scales, even in broad daylight.

In April 2010, the Border Patrol began to notice the car hire drivers to take migrants from Jacumba (pronounced hah-bah-Koom) for the area of ​​Los Angeles. They concluded in Mexico were the explorers mountain guide customers to a white farmhouse on the outskirts of Jacumba wait for drivers, with the aid of binoculars and telephones.

From the top of barren mountains, explorers can see for miles and follow each step. It is only 300 meters from the border fence to the spread of well-kept barns and silos. Scouts absolute command, a walk that takes only minutes, compared with three or four days may be necessary for migrants to reach Interstate 8 in the areas of California.

"They say that running, sitting, hiding in the bush, to avoid the rocks," said Daniel Page, assistant special ice charge of investigations in San Diego.

The drivers who were arrested and prosecuted Border Patrol and ICE investigators cousins ​​in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Ana who were suspected to contract with Mexican smugglers to pick up immigrants once they entered the United States . They were identified as illegal immigrants long ago by the Mexican state of Michoacan and the extended family led by the violation of immigration in southern California.

According to investigators, the cousins ​​have used the legions of drivers - dozens, at least - to navigate the roads of California. Their places of recruitment included clubs in Santa Ana and Long Beach.

The pilots were high school students, housewives, and a variety of down-on-their-luck Americans. The main task of qualification is subject to U.S. citizenship or legal residence of a person, trying to make it less control at checkpoints borders Highway Patrol.

Cell phones dealers spared the expense of paying a $ 50 guide for every immigrant who carried through, the researchers said.

Migrants contributed $ 5,000 to cross, at the upper end of a normal rate to be driven through the mountains of California. The costs are small - $ 100 to $ 300 for the American driver, $ 25 to $ 200 per day for the operator of a detention house in California, as well as rental cars and phones. Smuggling organizations - which is based in Southern California and one in Mexico - the rest.

Walking guides are replaced by other phones in remote border regions, including the Arizona desert and the Imperial Valley of California, where the signal gives a view of the mountains of Mexico, responsible for border patrol said. Cell phone coyotes also were placed on American soil.

Expand phone coverage has consequences not only for smugglers. The Border Patrol agents can now communicate with each other more easily. Humanitarian groups hope to reduce the number of migrants who die each year crossing the border have argued strongly for greater coverage, and said it offers a lifeline to call 911 for help.Mobile Phones To Support Frontier Traffic

Investigators believe Jacumba smuggling across about 10 people a week, a relatively low, reflecting a sharp decline in illegal crossings from Mexico. The apprehension of the Border Patrol has plunged by more than half since 2005 to its lowest level in decades.

Smugglers based in Mexico remains elusive.Mobile Phones To Support Frontier Traffic

"We get a lot of information from drivers," said the page. "People pick them up here, have no connection to the south side."