(The Center Square) – A California woman’s recent arrest and prosecution for her role in coordinating a human smuggling operation from Mexico is a scheme law enforcement officials are finding is all too common in border states.
A Chula Vista woman last month pleaded guilty in federal court to managing all aspects of a human smuggling operation from Mexico to California. This included helping hide foreign nationals in trunks of vehicles and coaching alleged smugglers driving them on how to successfully pass through the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection San Diego Sector.
Ericka Aldana, 40, of Chula Vista, recruited at least five drivers, procured vehicles for their use, obtained passports for them, and coached them on how to dress and respond to questions CBP officers asked them, according to a recent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announcement.
She also managed a Chula Vista stash house where smuggled foreign nationals were held and helped transport them to their final destinations in the U.S., according to the report.
Agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and CBP investigating the case found that she crossed the border into Mexico and drove back into California alongside alleged smugglers. As she drove alongside them, she directed them to drive in less risky border lanes where she believed they were less likely to get caught by CBP inspectors as they drove through the Otay Mesa POE.
Over a period of five years, investigators found that Aldana smuggled more than 25 people into California, some paying $10,000 per person to be smuggled into the United States.
“Ms. Aldana avoided getting caught for years, but she could not evade accountability forever,” U.S. Attorney Tara K. McGrath said. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California prosecuted the case.
HSI San Diego Special Agent in Charge Chad Plantz said, “Human smuggling is driven by greed as the defendant demonstrated in this case. HSI and partnered law enforcement agencies will not stand for this deceitful and often violent act of human smuggling. We are committed to bringing down human smugglers one by one.”
Aldana is scheduled to be sentenced on March 15 by U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo.
This is one of many cases involving Californians involved in human smuggling at the border.
Texas sheriffs have arrested Californians on human smuggling charges. They discovered that Californians were flying to San Antonio, renting a car, driving to the border to pick up foreign nationals who illegally entered from Mexico, and attempted to drive them north, until they got caught, Kinney County Sheriff Chief Deputy Armando Garcia told The Center Square.
The price the cartels “are paying now is $4,000-$5,000 per head,” he said. “I saw one $10,000 or $11,000 per person,” which depends “on how important that person is to get through.”
Garcia also pointed out that “a lot of times drivers aren’t even getting paid;” they often don’t get paid what they’re promised. Many who owe the money, those who are paying for the person to be smuggled into the country, “have property in the U.S. or Mexico and have signed deeds over to the cartel. If they don’t pay, the cartel take their property,” he said.
Unlike more lenient federal sentencing guidelines, a new Texas law goes into effect next month that increases the penalty for human smuggling and operating a stash house to a minimum of 10 years in prison.
