(Just to mention a few)
MCSO: Nine illegal immigrants arrested on their way to Florida
MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz. — The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has arrested nine people who had allegedly entered the country illegally.
According to the MCSO, the group was being smuggled in a van through the northern part of Maricopa County on Friday night.
An investigation by the MCSO’s Human Smuggling Unit revealed that all nine people were Mexican nationals who had paid $500 to be smuggled into the United States.
The group had reportedly entered the country near Altar and was heading to Florida.
Two members of the group were booked into the 4th Avenue Jail on state human smuggling charges. The other seven individuals, including a 17-year-old boy, were turned over to ICE officials.
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WICHITA, Kan. — When Candida L. Gutierrez’s identity was stolen, the thief didn’t limit herself to opening fraudulent credit and bank accounts. She assumed Gutierrez’s persona completely, using it to get a job, a driver’s license, a mortgage and even medical care for the birth of two children.
All the while, the crook claimed the real Gutierrez was the one who had stolen her identity. The women’s unusual tug-of-war puts a face on “total identity theft,” a brazen form of the crime in which con artists go beyond financial fraud to assume many other aspects of another person’s life.
The scheme has been linked to illegal immigrants who use stolen Social Security numbers to get paid at their jobs, and authorities fear the problem could soon grow to ensnare more unsuspecting Americans.
“When she claimed my identity and I claimed it back, she was informed that I was claiming it too,” said Gutierrez, a 31-year-old Houston elementary school teacher. “She knew I was aware and that I was trying to fight, and yet she would keep fighting. It is not like she realized and she stopped. No, she kept going, and she kept going harder.”
A 32-year-old illegal immigrant named Benita Cardona-Gonzalez is accused of using Gutierrez’s identity during a 10-year period when she worked at a Topeka company that packages refrigerated foods.
For years, large numbers of illegal immigrants have filled out payroll forms using their real names
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ICE News Releases
October 17, 2012
Corpus Christi, TX
16 indicted in Houston-area drug, alien smuggling organization
HOUSTON — Sixteen people were arrested Tuesday on alien smuggling and/or drug smuggling charges. The arrests were announced by: U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson, Southern District of Texas; Special Agent in Charge Sean McElroy, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); and Chief Charles McClelland, Houston Police Department (HPD).
The two-year investigation resulted in the return of two sealed indictments Sept. 20, which were unsealed following the execution of arrest warrants Oct. 16 and 17.
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15 illegal immigrants found on smuggler boat NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Fifteen illegal immigrants hidden inside the bilge area of a pleasure boat in Newport Harbor have been turned over to federal immigration officers.
They were examined by paramedics and turned over to federal officials.
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Zetas Hitman Gets Life in
Prison
Laredo, Texas - Gerardo Castillo-Chavez, aka “Cachetes” or Armado Garcia; and Eduardo Carreon-Ibarra, aka “Negro,” have been sent to federal prison for years following their multiple convictions stemming from a lengthy Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) investigation, United States Attorney Kenneth Magidson announced Friday.
Castillo-Chavez, 26, who hails from Miguel Aleman, Tamaulipas, Mexico, was convicted on all counts as charged following five days of trial on January 25, 2012. Castillo-Chavez was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 40 years. Carreon-Ibarra, 28, is a Laredo native and was convicted by a plea of guilty on June 1, 2012. Today, he was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison to run consecutively to his previous 20-year sentence.
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MEXICO CITY – State police found an SUV containing “three rockets” that apparently belonged to a criminal organization in Piedras Negras, a border city in northern Mexico, Coahuila Public Safety Secretary Jorge Luis Moran Delgado said.
The live rockets and several grenades were found by Coahuila state police special operations unit officers Saturday in an SUV abandoned by criminals during a chase, Moran Delgado told Milenio Television.
The officers were attacked and the vehicle was damaged when it hit a house, forcing the four occupants to flee on foot, with other gunmen providing them with protection, the state official said.
An inspection of the abandoned vehicle turned up the weapons, Moran Delgado said.
The criminals “managed to recover” a launcher from the SUV, but they left the three rockets behind, the Coahuila public safety secretary said.
The weapons will be turned over to the army for destruction, Moran Delgado said.
Police also found portable radios and batteries in the abandoned SUV, the state official said.
“This is not the first time in Coahuila” that “rockets and rocket launchers” have been used, Moran Delgado said.
The state police’s special operations unit was attacked with two rockets in March, Moran Delgado said, adding that a police vehicle was damaged in the incident.
“We must investigate how it is possible that these types of weapons ended up in the hands of these criminals, how it is possible that they entered the country,” the public safety secretary said.
The Gulf cartel has been battling Los Zetas for control of Coahuila and smuggling routes into the United States.
Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, the top Los Zetas cartel boss, was killed in a shootout with marines in Coahuila state on Oct. 7.
