US police arrested 47 people and broke up a human smuggling network that used rogue shuttle companies to ferry thousands of illegal immigrants from the Arizona-Mexico border across the US, authorities said on Thursday.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) said those arrested included the owners and employees of five Arizona commercial shuttle companies, following a year-long operation involving US and Mexican police.
“Forty-seven people have been arrested today ... five shuttle companies have been shut down, and multiple smuggling routes have been stopped in their tracks,” ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton told a news conference in Phoenix.
Arizona straddles a heavily trafficked corridor for both human and drug smugglers from Mexico.
Last year, US Border Patrol agents made more than 241,000 arrests in the sector south of Tucson, Arizona, and seized more than 60 tonnes of marijuana.
Morton said the shuttle companies targeted in the operation moved illegal immigrants north from the border city of Nogales, Arizona, to Tucson and Phoenix, using fake bus receipts in a bid to make the shuttle trips appear legitimate.
The network then moved the migrants, most of them from Mexico and Central America, and some from as far away as China, to cities across the US, including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.
Criminal indictments handed down in the case charged defendants with federal crimes including money laundering, alien smuggling and conspiracy charges.
A conviction for conspiracy to transport illegal aliens carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
Dennis Burke, US attorney for the District of Arizona, said cooperation between nine federal, state and local police agencies involved, as well as Mexican police, was “unprecedented.”
“There is ... a chain from [the] Arizona-Mexico border through Nogales to Phoenix and then branching out through the United States, today ... that chain is broken,” Burke said. “It will be extremely difficult to repair that chain, it is a missing link that greatly disrupts the infrastructure of human smuggling organizations.”
The US government is under pressure to crack down on cross-border crime in the desert state after a prominent rancher was shot dead by a suspected smuggler in southern Arizona late last month. The Arizona legislature in Phoenix voted through a measure this week giving local police the authority to determine whether people are in the country legally. The bill, widely seen as one of the toughest measures yet taken by a US state to crack down on illegal immigration, requires the signature of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to become law.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of