Migrant Paid $130 to ‘Rent’ Boy to Cross Border as Family, Says DOJ…
A Guatemalan man allegedly paid a family the equivalent of $130 to “rent” their eight-year-old son so that he could go to the U.S. as a “family,” federal prosecutors told a Tucson grand jury in March. He also allegedly paid another $130 (about 1,000 quetzales) to another person who created a false birth certificate for the child.
In a federal indictment reported on by Tucson.com, Maynor Velasquez Molina sought out a Guatemalan child he could use to get into the U.S. because he was told that would be “easier to get into the United States with a child,” a federal agent stated in a criminal complaint. Velasquez crossed the border with the young boy as part of a large group of 101 migrants who illegally crossed the border on February 18 just west of the Lukeville Port of Entry, the Arizona news outlet reported.
They made the illegal border crossing after traveling across Mexico by bus, the special agent stated. After being processed in the Tucson Sector, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents began talking to the man and eventually learned he paid for the use of the boy and for the false documents used in the smuggling case.
The grand jury returned an indictment on March 27 on a charge of human smuggling, Tucson.com stated.
ICE unveils new ‘most wanted’ list…
USA to make 30,000 more visas available for seasonal workers…
The Trump administration plans to allow 30,000 more foreign workers temporarily into the United States for seasonal work through the end of September, a move that reflects how the booming economy has complicated President Donald Trump’s efforts to restrict legal immigration.
Details of the plan were in a draft rule obtained by The Associated Press. It would benefit oyster shucking companies, fisheries, loggers and seasonal hotels, including Trump’s own Mar-a-Lago club — all of which use the visas to hire migrants for temporary work they say Americans won’t do.
The visas, known as H-2Bs, will be granted only to returning foreign workers who have had the visa before, over the last three fiscal years. Those workers have already been vetted and are trusted and not likely to stay pasta their visa, officials said.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will begin taking applications from employers on behalf of the workers once the temporary rule is published in the Federal Register, expected on Wednesday.
Cartels thrive in New Mexico after feds shut down checkpoints…
ALAMOGORDO, N.M. — In this sprawling desert city in the shadow of the Sacramento Mountains, local officials are fed up with the border crisis — and have gone rogue.
Otero County last month became the first border community to declare a state of emergency after the federal government shut down two local checkpoints in the area, which had traditionally provided a second line of defense against shipments of drugs and illegal immigrants who managed to sneak through the border at El Paso, about 90 miles to the south.
“It’s a green light for the cartels when border checkpoints are down,” Otero County Sheriff David Black, 56, told The Post.
Black, who has lived in this city of nearly 32,000 people his whole life, said he has 44 “gun toters” overseeing the county’s 6,628 square miles of lonely ranchland and pistachio orchards nestled among national parkland and Holloman Air Force Base.
Now the lawman said he has to deploy his own overworked forces to stop drugs such as methamphetamines, marijuana and fentanyl from coming through his territory, which is home to some 65,000 people.
Otero County is undefended because US Customs and Border Protection shut down two inspection facilities on US Routes 54 and 70, Black said. The Border Protection agents were sent south to El Paso to help with the massive influx of migrants. More than 800 have been arriving per day at the border near El Paso, according to Border Protection statistics.