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Smuggling ring had help from Mexican official. by Todd Bensman - Express-News. 10/01/2008 12:00 CDT
News Type: Event — Seeded on Wed Oct 1, 2008 7:26 PM EDT
Article Source: The San Antonio Express-Newsadvertisement
With help from a bribed official in Mexico's Belize consulate office, two men from Ghana ran a transcontinental smuggling operation that ferried dozens of unauthorized immigrants into Texas from countries the State Department regards as terrorist havens, federal court records and interviews show.
Since at least 2005, the operation helped as many as 100 U.S.-bound immigrants, paying as little as $5,000 each, from such countries as Sudan and Somalia, travel by air and ground to Mexico and then over the U.S. border to Houston.
Some of the money ended up in the pockets of at least one Mexican Consulate employee in Belize whose corruption, the two ringleaders have now confessed, provided the crucial link in the pipeline.
A U.S. national security investigation involving Belize and Mexican law enforcement agencies shut the pipeline down with the arrests last fall of Ghana native Mohammed Kamel Ibrahim, based in Mexico City, and Sampson Lovelace Boateng, a Ghanan who lived in Belize.
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Last week's guilty pleas by Boateng and Ibrahim highlight a recurring headache for Washington that has defied remedy: mounting instances in which allegedly bribed Mexico's foreign consulate workers supplied fraudulent travel documents.
In 2005, for instance, Mexican authorities fired or tried to prosecute embassy personnel in Beirut for taking bribes that allowed Lebanese nationals to illegally enter Mexico and then the U.S., including one man later convicted in Detroit of supporting the terror group Hezbollah.
Another similar scandal broke out last year in Mexico's Colombia embassy. Earlier this year, Indian authorities caught Afghans en route to Mexico posing as Mexicans with real passports they allegedly bought from a Mexican Consulate office in Mumbai.
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#1 - Wed Oct 1, 2008 7:27 PM EDT{"canLink":false,"threadId":"375222","isPrivate":false}
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