immigrants offered to be smuggled to US, instead tortured and held for ransom

Discussion in 'Immigration' started by kazenatsu, Sep 25, 2020.

  1. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 15, 2017
    Messages:
    34,640
    Likes Received:
    11,208
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Two men promised to smuggle Cuban migrants into the United States via Mexico, but instead they tortured and extorted their victims

    Reynaldo Marquez Crespo, 41, and Jancer Sergio Ramos Valdes, 33, both Cuban, face charges of alien smuggling and kidnapping in a South Florida federal court.

    Crespo and Valdez promised their victims safe passage across the Yucatan Straits, the body of water that separates Cuba from Mexico, on go-fast boats and then over land across Mexico to the United States border sometime during January 2019.

    But the migrants were in for a rude awakening after Crespo, Valdez and a group of other unnamed suspects took them from Cuba by boat to Merida, Mexico.

    There, the migrants were locked in a house and forced to turn over contact information for family members in the United States who could pay a $10,000 ransom.

    Then, the men reached out to relatives and threatened to torture, starve or kill their victims if the family members didn’t pay, according to a federal criminal complaint.

    It wasn't an idle threat. Family members of the victims received videos of beatings and torture sessions featuring their captured relatives, court records say. They were told their relatives would be deprived of food and water if they didn't pay.

    The federal criminal complaint against Crespo and Valdez mentions at least three victims, some with family members living in Miami.

    All three of the victims, their narratives recorded in court records, report witnessing the smugglers beat and electrocute other kidnapped migrants. One told the FBI his captors showed him a cellphone video where they chopped off someone’s finger with a shovel after their family couldn't cough up the cash.

    Another smuggling victim, who had medical issues and wore a colostomy bag, was stripped naked, tied up and stunned with a Taser. Then the kidnappers sent a video of the torture to his family members in Las Vegas.

    Once the family members of the victims paid the ransom, the victims were placed on a bus and transported to the U.S.-Mexico border, which they were instructed to cross and then ask for asylum.

    So in the end, even after the ransom was paid, the smugglers didn't really fully fulfill their part of their bargain.

    The FBI interviewed one victim after they crossed the border, and that victim managed to pick Crespo and Valdez out of a lineup of photos. The victim also identified Crespo as a leader of the operation.
    During the investigation, the FBI managed to track down one unnamed Miami-based co-conspirator through that person's social media profile. The co-conspirator had helped wire money to the kidnappers back in Mexico for the victim's ransom, according to the FBI complaint.
    The kidnappers contacted a second victim's Miami-based family in January 2019 and said their relative would be beaten and killed if they didn't fork over $7,000, according to court records. Later, the victim told the FBI that an unnamed kidnapper "told the group that he had raped the wives of other victims he had previously kidnapped as a form of payment," according to court records.
    The kidnappers held the person for 10 days until his family paid the ransom, according to court records.

    The Las Vegas-based family of the third victim immediately called the FBI after being contacted by the kidnappers. Agents recorded several of the calls where ransom was negotiated, according to court records. During the third victim's captivity, an unnamed migrant Cuban escaped from the kidnappers' hideout and alerted Mexican authorities, who freed an unknown number of captives.
    Federal authorities captured Crespo in Texas. Valdes was arrested in Connecticut, where a federal judge ordered that he be held without bail pending trial. Both men face charges of conspiring to induce aliens to come to the United States (15 year maximum penalty) and conspiracy to commit kidnapping (additional 20 year maximum penalty).

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crim...d-and-extorted-them/ar-BB19oReH?ocid=msedgntp


    These type of tricks by Mexican human smugglers are extremely common.

    I detailed in another topic how many of the women who attempt to make the illegal journey into the US get raped by the smuggler they paid to help them.

    Many of these human smugglers are not good people.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2020
  2. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 15, 2017
    Messages:
    34,640
    Likes Received:
    11,208
    Trophy Points:
    113
    From the street, the little brown house was unremarkable yet pleasant. A bright yellow toy school bus and red truck hung on the hog-wire fence, and the home’s facade featured a large Texas lone star. But in the backyard was a gutted mobile home that a prosecutor later described as a “house of horrors.”

    It was discovered one day in 2014, when a man called from Maryland to report that his stepfather, Moises Ferrera, a migrant from Honduras, was being held there and tortured by the smugglers who had brought him into the United States. His captors wanted more money, the stepson said, and were pounding Mr. Ferrera's hands repeatedly with a hammer, vowing to continue until his family sent it.

    When federal agents and sheriff’s deputies descended on the house, they discovered that Mr. Ferrara was not the sole victim. Smugglers had held hundreds of migrants for ransom there, their investigation found. They had mutilated limbs and raped women.

    "What transpired there is the subject of science fiction, of a horror movie -- and something we simply don't see in the United States," the prosecutor, Matthew Watters, told a jury when the accused smugglers went on trial. Organized crime cartels, he said, had "brought this terror across the border."​

    Smuggling Migrants at the Border Now a Billion-Dollar Business, NY Times, Mariam Jordan, July 25, 2022
    Smuggling Migrants at the Border Now a Billion-Dollar Business - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2022

Share This Page