PHOENIX — The illegal immigrants being sneaked into the country were allegedly given phony $30 tickets and receipts for a van ride. They were warned that if the van got pulled over by police, they should show their receipts.
Federal investigators Thursday raided five shuttle-van services in Tucson and Phoenix and accused the companies of knowingly helping to smuggle tens of thousands of illegal immigrants into the U.S. over four years. A total of 49 van operators and alleged smugglers from Mexico and the U.S. were arrested.
The raids exposed a piece of what authorities say is a network of seemingly legitimate businesses that sneak people across the Mexican border.
“The goal of the shuttle operators is to make the aliens look like any other person who would get into a shuttle, like they were going from the airport to their hotel or on a journey around the Southwest,” said Matthew Allen, chief of investigations for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona, the busiest illegal gateway into the U.S.
Investigators said the shuttle-van companies served illegal immigrants who had slipped into the country by walking through the desert past Border Patrol checkpoints. They boarded the vans in Tucson and were driven to Phoenix.
Though there are no immigration checkpoints on the 115-mile stretch of Interstate 10 from Tucson to Phoenix, the road is patrolled by state and local police. Once they reach Phoenix, illegal immigrants usually are home free. From there, they typically make their way to jobs all over the country.
When the van operators were pulled over, they claimed they were legitimate transportation services and that it wasn’t their business to ask about the immigration status of their passengers.
“This case has exposed that for the lie that it is,” said John Morton, assistant secretary of homeland security.
Investigators said the five shuttle-van services were never really legitimate businesses but were created solely to help smuggle immigrants.
