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Flushing Them Out

Continued from page 4

Published on December 27, 2007

It turned out the men had escaped from a nearby drop house, where they led the deputies. The discovery was the result of pure luck, not investigative excellence.

Nonetheless, what the sheriff's deputies discovered shined a shocking light on the inside of a drop house, and the serious ramifications Arizona's anti-smuggling law could have for victims of smuggling.

In mid-October, sheriff's deputies responded to reports that a number of "illegals" were running shirtless and barefoot through the streets of El Mirage. When rounded up, deputies learned the immigrants had escaped from a drop house where they'd been held hostage.

The inside of the house was disgusting. The bedroom doors were locked from the outside, and in each room, deputies discovered jugs of human waste. Torn, bloody underwear was discovered in one room. The kitchen was filthy with grease and old food, and there was no furniture, only makeshift beds.

One of the victims, the owner of the bloody clothes, was a pregnant teenager.

Her husband, identified only as "Angel" in the report, re-created the scene for police officers:

As soon as they arrived at the drop house, he and his wife were stripped of their possessions and locked in a room. The smugglers made phone calls to his family in Chiapas, Mexico, demanding $3,200 — on top of a set smuggling fee. Angel was "advised that if he didn't pay, he was going to die."

He witnessed many beatings inside the house, but the worst was the beating of his wife. When her family could not immediately pay her ransom, she was dragged by her wrist from the room.

For the next half hour, he could hear his wife screaming and crying from the next room. When she returned, badly beaten, she said she'd been punched in the stomach. She miscarried inside the house.

Another man told sheriff's deputies what happened to him when he arrived at the house on October 2. As soon as he entered the house, the coyotes took his identification, his wallet, and all of his personal belongings and locked him in a room with about 14 other people. He called the coyotes "kidnappers" because they would not release him until his fees were paid.

This transport fee for this particular victim was bumped $200, from $2,500 to $2,700, upon his arrival in Phoenix. He told police that the coyotes would call his wife demanding more money and beat him because she didn't have it. This happened to a number of people trapped in the home who were told that if their relatives did not pay up, they would be killed and dumped in the desert.

When he was caught trying to escape, the man was taken to a bathroom, where he was tortured and almost suffocated with a plastic bag.

Another man in the same room was beaten and threatened by guards for making too much noise.

According to the police report, one of the coyote guards, "placed the nose of the gun on [his] neck and told [him] that he has killed lots of people, and that his hands were itching to kill another."

The man's offense? He was praying.

These are the apparent effects of the smuggling law. According to activists and members of the legal community, the worst thing about the law is that it views victims as criminals. All the people discovered in the El Mirage drop house are subject to felony charges under Arizona law. In an uncharacteristic move, of the 54 people discovered, only five were booked on conspiracy to commit human-smuggling charges. The rest were released to ICE custody for voluntary return to their home country. Because the sheriff will not talk to New Times about the case, it's unclear why his deputies made this decision.

Even if victims are deported without charges, the threat of arrest and time in the county jail still looms.

"They are defenseless," says Phoenix lawyer Daniel Ortega. "These are the people the sheriff and the county attorney are going after. The people who are the most vulnerable."

It's telling that none of the men picked up in El Mirage phoned the police for help. Thomas and Arpaio spread fear of the police by feverishly trumpeting the number of arrests and convictions under the law. Other states, like Oklahoma, are considering passing similar laws because of it. But the numbers aren't exactly what they seem.

Since March 2006, Arpaio's deputies have charged at least 800 people with conspiracy to commit smuggling, and Thomas' office recently boasted of its 500th conviction.

Most of the pollitos, the slang word for people who pay for transport to the U.S., are offered the chance to plead guilty to the reduced charge of solicitation (rather than conspiracy) to commit human smuggling. After they take the plea, they are sentenced to unsupervised probation and turned over to ICE for voluntary removal from the country.

Antonio Colón, a lawyer in the Maricopa County public defender's office who has defended many of these cases, says most people don't want to stay and fight the charge.

"They have the option to get probation and get released to ICE. Clients just say, 'I want to get out.' They don't know why they are incarcerated. They don't understand what's going on. And telling them, 'You conspired to smuggle yourself into the country,' doesn't make any sense," he says. "As soon as they get a hearing, they're told, 'We'll give you the ticket home [if you plead guilty]' and they all want the ticket home because they've been incarcerated for no reason. It's kind of sad."

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