5 Held in Alleged Immigrant Child Smuggling Ring

WASHINGTON â€”  The Immigration and Naturalization Service announced Monday that it had broken up a multimillion-dollar smuggling ring that took advantage of the desperation of parents living illegally in the United States to have their children join them.

Hundreds of children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador were smuggled through Mexico, into Los Angeles, and then throughout the United States, the INS said.

The ring, which began operations in 1994, charged $5,000 for each child, the INS said--a fortune for men and women who would be lucky if they earned even minimum wage in the United States. The children ranged from 18 months to 17 years of age.

“After years of earning enormous profits on the backs of innocent children by exploiting their desperation and exploiting their very fear, this ring of vultures is now shut down,� said Johnny Williams, INS executive assistant commissioner for field operations, at a news conference in Washington.

INS agents were tipped off to the ring on April 5, when Guatemalan authorities intercepted seven buses bound from El Salvador for the United States. They found 53 children, who tearfully told authorities they were hungry and had been forced to sleep on the floor of hotel lobbies, officials said.

“This was a multinational investigation that has broken what we believe is the largest child smuggling ring we have ever encountered,� Williams said. “This was not a humanitarian operation built on any shred of compassion. It was a mean-spirited criminal enterprise, driven by greed and criminal profit.�

He said the probe, dubbed Operation White Fields, is continuing.

While most of the children expected to be reunited with their parents, who were already living--often illegally--in the United States, some were brought in for work or, to a lesser degree, for “exploitation,� INS spokesman Russell Bergeron said.

Officials of the INS and the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington said Monday that they would decide on a case-by-case basis whether to return the rescued children to their home countries and whether to prosecute or deport their parents.

The investigation involved INS officers in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, as well as those in Washington, Los Angeles and Houston. Also participating were law enforcement agencies in El Salvador and Guatemala.

Berta Campos, the alleged ringleader, was arrested in Los Angeles on July 15 and accused of arranging to smuggle a youth identified only as “G.L.A.M.� for $5,000, plus $60 for expenses.

A second suspect, Guillermo Antonio Paniagua, was arrested in Houston on June 13. The indictment alleges that two months earlier, Paniagua met a 15-year-old boy identified only as “J.A.R.� at a hotel in San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital, to arrange to smuggle him into the U.S., then pocketed half of the $5,000 fee.

On Friday, agents arrested three more suspects in Houston--Ana Karina Cruz Rivas, Juan Orlando Servellon De Leon and Andrea Giron. They and Paniagua were expelled from Guatemala before their arrest, the INS said.

All five, who are El Salvador nationals, are charged with conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants, which carries a penalty of as much as 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Authorities in El Salvador also arrested seven people there, but the U.S. Department of Justice has no immediate plans to seek extradition, said Channing Phillips, chief of staff for the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, on Monday.

The U.S. Marshals Service is transferring Campos from Los Angeles to Washington for her arraignment. A hearing for Paniagua is set for Wednesday in Washington, and the other three suspects arrested in the U.S. will have hearings in Texas today, Phillips said.