Thriving smuggling network alarms officials

East Africans looking for better life
In the Boateng and Ibrahim smuggling cases, people were stored in luggage compartments of buses for as long as 12 hours and driven to the U.S.-Mexican border. The smugglers escorted clients as they walked across the border into the U.S. between official entry ports.

Ibrahim and Boateng used international carriers DHL and Federal Express to deliver payments and travel documents.

On July 29, 2006, Ibrahim sent an e-mail to an unidentified associate: “i have a visa deal from ethiopia but it is a little bit expensive. I am currently in Belize to collect for some guys. i will get it in 3 days but it will cost 5000usd.”

The $5,000 would cover the visa and corrupt officials — the full smuggling package.

East Africans are mostly coming to the U.S. to find a better life because of job opportunities that don’t exist in their home countries.

One senior intelligence official said there’s little evidence yet of East Africans trying to cross into the U.S. to engage in terrorist activity. The official requested anonymity because the information in the assessment is not public.

As computer chips and biometrics are required more often for travel documents, terrorists will have a more difficult time entering the U.S. and could potentially use these smuggling routes as an alternative, said Hatfield, the immigration official who heads the human smuggling division.

Prices, violence rising
The number of smuggling networks has remained steady over the past 10 years, with the highest concentration in Latin America, Hatfield said. It’s the price and violence that have gone up. Ten years ago, it might have cost $500 to go from Mexico to Texas, whereas now it could cost up to $2,000.

“The competition is now harder for someone to come in illegally,” Hatfield said. “The goal of the smuggler is to make as much money as they can.”

People with terrorist ties still try to enter the country legally or with fake documents, Hatfield said, but ICE is keeping an eye on other potential methods now that there are heightened security checks. “We’re watching those closely,” he said.

Terrorists will continue to use whatever means necessary to get into the United States — including smuggling networks, said Janice Kephart, a former counsel on the Sept. 11 Commission. Because it’s much harder to use false documents than it once was, these smuggling networks offer a good way to get into the country anonymously, she said.

The East African countries that Homeland Security is watching all have weak enforcement in place for travel documents and have connections to organizations with anti-American causes, Kephart said.

“They do what they need to based on what their end goal is,” she said.

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