A Herald article provides some interesting information on how alien smugglers operate in Miami and in Cuba; they use satellite phones and GPS devices, and send someone to Cuba who finds the potential passengers and “guides them to a staging area and on to a barrier island off the Cuban coast.” Families in Miami pay $7,000 to $10,000 once the relative arrives in the United States. And the feds are considering prosecuting those who pay the smugglers because, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they are “part of the criminal conspiracy.”
This supposed stepped up enforcement of the law could have big consequences in Miami. It is seen by many today as a human right to pay a criminal to smuggle human beings to South Florida (or Mexico). Putting folks on notice that they may be put in jail will go a long way to slowing down the smuggling, which has increased in the last year. Maybe this came out of all the apocolyptic Cuba crisis planning the Department
ReplyDeleteof Homeland Security was doing earlier this year? Hey, what if we enforce the law?? How about that for a revolutionary idea?? We will see if it was just talk I suppose...