Evil trade of the three Franciscos

LOS ANGELES – The chickens were packed tightly into their coops when the Los Angeles Police Department staged a pair of raids.

The chickens were 140 illegal aliens - "chickens" in smuggler parlance - and the coops were two nondescript private residences, or "drop houses" slang for safe houses, in South Los Angeles.

The aliens, on the last leg of their under-the-radar odyssey from Central America, were awaiting transportation from Los Angeles, one of the main hubs on the illegal immigrant trail, by a shadowy outfit subsequently dubbed the Three Franciscos.

Last month, as part of a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigation, Francisco Andres-Francisco, 40, was jailed for 78 months for concealing and transporting more than 9000 illegal immigrants.

Officials say the Three Franciscos network - named for the chief defendants, all Guatemalans - is the biggest smuggling ring ever detected in Los Angeles.

Five defendants, including Francisco Andres-Pedro, 36, are in custody. A further six, including Francisco Pedro-Francisco, 30, are on the run.

Agents say Andres-Francisco was the kingpin in an organisation that made at least US$9 million ($15.4 million) hauling illegal immigrants from Guatemala, Ecuador and El Salvador from the Arizona border to drop houses in LA and Lancaster, a city in California's Mojave Desert.

The immigrants, who paid up to US$3700 (NZ$6300) for passage, were taken by van or SUV to Illinois, New Jersey and Tennessee.

The vehicles had blacked-out windows; immigrants had their shoes confiscated to prevent escape and were kept hungry to limit toilet stops. Costs were carefully calculated and the network's drivers were expected to reimburse any money not used.

Vehicles, like drop houses, were frequently overloaded and safety was not a priority. In 2007 a network van crashed and 10 immigrants were ejected, causing serious injuries.

"It was a typical smuggling outfit, " says Scott Hatfield, a unit chief with ICE, "with a cadre of recruiters, transporters, safe house operators and so on to bring people to safe houses in the US, where the network would seek payment from relatives of the smuggled aliens."

In effect, this was holding immigrants hostage to get payment. The Three Franciscos moved 200 to 300 people a month, "on a much larger scale than we normally see", says Hatfield.

In worst-case scenarios - other than death in transit, the fate of some who take the cheapest, more dangerous route into the US across deserts and mountains - immigrants are raped or murdered or, in trafficking cases as distinct from smuggling, are tricked into believing they will find jobs, then forced into prostitution or sweatshops.

The network is a window into the lucrative people-smuggling business, which Arizona - one of four US-Mexico border states - estimates generates US$2 billion in profit a year.

Smugglers operate by land, sea and air, shifting routes and techniques to counter law enforcement efforts to stop them. Recently, there has been an upsurge in traffic by small boats from Baja California in Mexico to neighbouring California in the US.

The most expensive passage is via plane, in part because this demands good documentation. Rates are also determined by how far immigrants travel.

Besides increasing security at the border and breaking up networks like the Three Franciscos, ICE also "pushes our borders," training police in the 50 countries that disgorge illegal immigrants how to take down smuggling networks. As more money is spent on US border security, smugglers have raised their game.

"It's a network, with entrepreneurs who perform different functions," explains Susan Ginsburg, Mobility and Security director at the Migration Policy Institute who advised the 9/11 Commission on border safety.

Spotters at the border phone in intelligence.

"They identify border personnel, watch the shift changes, watch what vehicles they stop, see if they have the dogs out, if they check outbound cars. It's real-time information. It's a huge operation. The number of spotters usually outnumbers the US Customs and Border personnel."

Documents experts run theft rings, dummy up "imposter" passports - real document, fake photo - or complete fakes. Services include makeup and wigs.

The immigrant's fee includes taxes paid at the border to the drug cartels controlling illegal passage across the line. Ginsburg says the drug trafficking organisations have "a major presence in human-smuggling."

Whereas "generations-old" people-smuggling networks run by families have pushed into drugs, the cartels, which include corrupt police and soldiers - such as the Zetas, trained by the US in counter- narcotics and equipped with automatic weapons, body armour and encrypted radios - have added people-smuggling to their traffic in drugs, gun and dirty money.

"Recently, criminal gangs have interposed themselves as intermediaries at the final stage of crossing into the US, straddling both sides of the border, " says Ginsburg.

"They include both ethnic Mexican gangs and MS-13 [the El Salvadoran gang, Mara Salvatrucha]."

It is an ominous development, linked to the escalating drug violence that has killed more than 7000 in the past 15 months, bringing parts of Mexico to near anarchy, that bodes ill for immigrants.

"One of the striking things that's going on," says Ginsburg, "is the kidnapping and extortion of the people being smuggled to kind of leverage them. One smuggler will steal (people) from another, then charge for releasing them. So they have to pay more than once."

One result has been a jump in US asylum applications from Mexico, with 70 applications in the first quarter of this year, as against almost 200 in 2008.

"There's almost a direct connection between increased border security in the US and the rise of organised crime in the handling of people coming across the border," says Terry Goddard, Arizona's Attorney General, a point he stressed during recent a recent congressional hearing.

Sometimes immigrants are persuaded to carry drugs. "It's one way of reducing the cost of your passage, if you become a mule," says Goddard.

He says the cartels are "very much" involved in human smuggling and human trafficking. As for the new border fence, the chief beneficiaries may be the contractors who built it.

Goddard described an episode - revealed last December in Operation Tumbleweed, an anti-smuggling effort - where traffickers used night vision goggles and hydraulic ramps to drive a ton of marijuana in a truck across the fence in minutes.

The fence's deterrent value? "Almost irrelevant."

Little wonder Arizona is possibly the front line in people-smuggling.

A recent wire report estimated 1000 drop houses in the Phoenix area.

Goddard says they don't know how many, but there are "an awful lot". The situation is exacerbated by the collapse of the sub-prime housing bubble, with empty houses rented by smugglers as drop houses.

"Probably the owner has no idea. But it's right there in our midst. He advocated increased co-ordination between law enforcement agencies to tackle the cartels.

"They have a seamless operation involving a wide number of different illegal activities. The federal response is highly segmented."

In recent weeks there has been a flurry of top-level negotiation across the line, with the Obama administration emphasising enforcement; the Merida Initiative, signed last year, stresses counter-narcotics.

But some observers suggest a more holistic approach is needed if there is to be any long-term hope of stemming illegal immigrants.

Essentially, this means trying to deter migrants in the first place, a tall order given the poverty south of the border and US prosperity, although the recession may have slowed traffic just as it has decreased remittances from the US.

"Building economic assistance is on our plate," says Fred Lash, a State Department spokesman.

"The overarching strategy that Secretary Clinton spoke about last week with President Calderon was of fostering economic development."

Such ideas are not new says the Migration Policy Institute's Don Kerwin.

"There have been micro-credit programmes and business ventures developed by diaspora communities, using remittances. But I don't think there's a lot of targeted government aid focused on immigration."

Part of the problem is that aid often encourages migration.

"People have some resources and can come," says Kerwin.

"So they do. You have to get to that point where the opportunity differential isn't as great as it is now, so people decide to stay home. It's more complicated than just throwing money. You need very long-term development costs."

One of the groups tackling this at the grassroots is Seattle coffee importer, Pura Vida, which uses part of its profits to subsidise growers' co-operatives in places like Oaxaca, Mexico.

"They make about US$6000 when they come to the States and spend half on illegally getting here,"; explains Sam Snyder, who directs the Pura Vida charity.

"They've no interest in living in the US. They're leaving their families to come up here."

Pura Vida hopes to help locals supplement their incomes and thus stay at home.

Meanwhile, illegal immigrants keep heading for the US, whatever the obstacles.

"Where there's a will there's a way," says Hatfield.

"It's been with us forever and I think it will remain."