Mexican human smuggling rings busted nationwide

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(The Center Square) – Mexican-based human smuggling rings have been busted in multiple states. One involved smuggling hundreds of people from Central America, Africa and the Middle East into Arizona; another involved holding hostage foreign nationals in a ransom scheme where they were killed. Another involved a $200 million forced labor scheme on U.S. farms.

California-Mexico hostage taking and murder 

In California, San Diego resident Isaac Jimenez pleaded guilty to a transnational human smuggling conspiracy in which foreign nationals were held hostage in Mexico, families paid “tens of thousands of dollars in vain” in ransom payments only for their loved ones to “never to be seen again.”  

“In at least two cases, the victims – a father of four U.S. citizen children and a young woman from Tijuana – disappeared after their families made multiple ransom payments to secure their freedom,” the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California announced.

In one case in September 2024, he “personally collected $15,000 in ransom payments from the U.S. citizen wife of the father of four who was being held against his will in Mexico by the smuggling organization,” and transported and delivered the money to coconspirators in Mexico. After ransom demands were met, more demands were made. Once the family couldn’t pay any more, communication was cut off, and the man is believed to have been killed, according to the complaint.

In December 2024, he agreed to coordinate the smuggling of a 20-year-old woman from Tijuana, Mexico, in exchange for $7,000. Instead, she was held hostage with a $30,000 ransom demand. Smugglers sent video calls to her “fiancé and family members showing them pointing firearms at her and kicking her in the chest and head” and threatened to kill her if the ransom wasn’t paid. After her family sent $10,000, she wasn’t released and is believed to have been killed, the complaint states. Sentencing is scheduled for September.

From Central Asia, Africa and the Middle East to Yuma, Arizona

In Arizona, the latest of two Mexican nationals involved in a transnational human smuggling ring extradited from Mexico was sentenced to 87 months in prison. The scheme involved smuggling foreign nationals from Central Asia, Africa and the Middle East into the U.S. between 2018 and 2022, charging each “as much as tens of thousands of dollars.” 

They smuggled hundreds from Bangladesh, Yemen, Pakistan, Eritrea, India, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Russia, Egypt, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico, according to the indictment.

The latest to be sentenced is Mexican national Raul Saucedo-Huipio, a manager or supervisor overseeing the smuggling route. He and his co-conspirators directed foreign nationals to illegally cross into the U.S. from Mexico through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Yuma Sector of Arizona – a region hard hit during the Biden administration. Foreign nationals were provided a ladder to climb over a border fence, directed to crawl through holes in the fence and use a plank for waterway crossings. They were also robbed at gun and knifepoint, according to the indictment. 

He and his coconspirator, Ofelia Hernandez-Salas, were arrested in Mexico in response to a March 2023 U.S. extradition request. In December 2024, he pleaded guilty to human smuggling charges. Hernandez-Salas was sentenced to 11 years in prison in May.  

From Mexico and Central America to forced labor on U.S. farms

In Georgia, three people were sentenced to between 10 and 51 months in prison for their roles in a human smuggling and labor trafficking operation that involved illegally transporting foreign nationals to work on South Georgia farms as agricultural workers.

The scheme dates to 2015, involving conspirators engaging “in mail fraud, international forced labor trafficking, and money laundering, among other crimes,” and fraudulently using the H-2A work visa program to transport foreign nationals from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras into the U.S. under the guise of agricultural work, according to the charges. 

The sentencing is part of a larger multi-state fraudulent visa, forced labor and money laundering scheme being prosecuted in the Southern, Middle, and Northern Districts of Georgia, the Middle District of Florida, and Southern District of Texas. Crimes are also being prosecuted in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and elsewhere, the Department of Justice said. 

The scheme involved requiring foreign nationals to pay fees for transportation, food, and housing and once they got to the U.S., withholding their travel and identification documents. They were then forced to perform “physically demanding work for little or no pay,” live in crowded, unsanitary, and degrading living conditions” and threatened with deportation and violence, according to the charges.

The conspirators earned more than $200 million through the scheme, laundering the funds through cash purchases of land, homes, vehicles, and businesses; cashier’s checks and funneling millions of dollars through a casino, according to the charges.

In other cases in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, three Mexican nationals were charged on 35 counts of trafficking Mexican farmworkers into forced labor conditions and detaining them after their visas expired for financial gain, The Center Square reported. In another case, six people in Washington state were indicted on 61 charges of operating a similar scheme, also abusing the H-2A visa program, The Center Square reported.