Kidnappings of illegal immigrants reportedly on rise in U.S.

PHOENIX -- Illegal immigrants who hire smugglers to bring them across the Mexican border into Arizona are getting mixed up in an underworld more violent and more cold-blooded than ever.

Law enforcement authorities say an increasing number of smugglers are holding immigrants hostage in the United States until they or their families pay up. Rival gangs of criminals are stealing the immigrants away from the smugglers and holding them for ransom. And criminals are kidnapping illegals already settled in Arizona, confident the victims will probably not run to the authorities for fear of being deported.

More than 150 miles from the border, Phoenix is reporting more immigrant kidnappings -- three to five every month -- than the border cities of San Diego and El Paso, Texas.

"It's happening a lot because it's easy to get away with," said Rob Hawkins, a detective in suburban Glendale.

Authorities say border smuggling is so dangerous now because it is so lucrative.

In part because of the tighter, post-Sept. 11 security along the border, smugglers are now charging more than $1,200 per person for a trip that cost $400 five years ago.

And the "coyotes," as the smugglers are known, have changed over the past decade. Investigators believe the big money has attracted violent drug smugglers, said Russell Ahr, an Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman.

"It wasn't that way 10 years ago," Phoenix police Detective Tony Morales said. "It was kind of a quiet, unnoticed crime. They'd smuggle them into the country and that would be the end of it. You wouldn't get the kidnappings and ransoms."

Tightened patrols in California and Texas in recent years have pushed more illegal immigrants toward Arizona, making it the hottest illegal entry point along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, immigration officials said.

Researchers and federal officials say it is impossible to estimate how many illegal immigrants successfully slip into the United States. But Arizona ranked first among the four Southwestern states in the number of arrests of illegal immigrants, with 376,000 last year.

Years ago, immigrant smugglers were like small businesses, focusing mostly on getting their customers across the border and perhaps helping them hop trains. Today, many smugglers use a network of drivers and guides who specialize on segments of the route, use cellular phones to communicate and arrange air and bus transportation to take immigrants to jobs across the country. Well-bankrolled operations even use computers.

Kidnapping-extortion represents yet another danger for immigrants crossing the Arizona desert, where more than 145 died of heat exposure, accidents and other causes last year.

In late 2001, Phoenix police found 17 illegal immigrants in a room with bars over the windows, doors locked from the outside and a surveillance camera. Several had been kidnapped from the desert just a day earlier. A few had been there for 28 days with little to eat because they could not come up with the $3,500 needed to secure their freedom.

Police said there is no way of knowing how many immigrant kidnappings end in murder, but they believe the number is low.

In one case, authorities are investigating the execution-style killings of eight immigrants whose bodies were found last year just outside Phoenix. One of the eight was a coyote kidnapped by men who pistol-whipped him in front of his family and demanded a $40,000 ransom. He was bound with his underwear and stabbed repeatedly.

Investigators believe the eight may have been kidnapped for ransom or could have been drug or immigrant smugglers who infringed on rival turf, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said.

In October, coyotes are believed to have fatally shot two rival smugglers and abducted nine immigrants northwest of Tucson.

Because many Mexican illegal immigrants come to this country to find work, Ruben Beltran, the Mexican consul general in Phoenix, said the United States should adopt guest worker programs and "regularize" illegal immigrants already here to encourage victims to report smuggling abuses.

"If we do that," he said, "there will be no reason for people to risk their lives in the desert."

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