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Date Posted: 00:23:36 11/30/07 Fri
Author: JMR (not just Brazilians)
Subject: Indictments in Canada Border Crossings

Indictments in Canada Border Crossings


BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) A human smuggling operation based in Toronto and another in Montreal moved hundreds of immigrants into the U.S., with some paying $10,000 apiece, American prosecutors said Wednesday in announcing indictments against the groups.
Most of the illegal border crossings took place on foot in a stretch the U.S. Border Patrol considers a prime area for smuggling because of its proximity to interstate highways that make it easy to move people once they're in the country, said Thomas Anderson, U.S. attorney for Vermont.
One of the groups, apparently working with recruiters in South Korea, would meet immigrants at the Toronto airport and take them to safe houses, then send them with guides or drop them near the border with instructions to meet drivers on the U.S. side, according to one of the indictments.
Anderson estimated the groups had brought hundreds of people into the U.S. from South Korea, Pakistan, India and Central America since 2004, though he did not have a specific figure. Some of those people paid as much as $10,000 for the smugglers' services, he said.
Officials said that some of the people brought into the United States had previous criminal records in this country, and that others were vulnerable to being preyed upon by the smugglers.
"Oftentimes, these people who are smuggled into the United States are indebted to these people for a very long time," said Bruce Foucart, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.
A federal grand jury in Vermont indicted the Toronto group in September and the Montreal group in October; the Toronto charges were sealed until Wednesday. Alien smuggling, the most serious charge, carries a sentence of as many as 15 years in prison upon conviction.
Eight of the 11 people charged had been arrested, including several by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and one in South Korea, authorities said. Two people were being sought in Canada and another in the U.S.
The arrests appear to have disrupted organized human smuggling along the Border Patrol sector that runs from Ogdensburg, N.Y., east to Maine, Anderson said.
"Roughly since August, the aliens we have apprehended coming across the Swanton sector have really dwindled to a trickle," he said

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