United States Customs and Border Protection arrested two Americans who were caught smuggling six illegal aliens in the back of a hearse across the border into Arizona late Monday night.
The arrests were flagged by Fox News’ Bill Melugin. “[Border] Patrol in Tucson, AZ sector arrested two U.S. citizens they say were using a hearse to smuggle 6 illegal immigrants dressed in camouflage. Driver and passenger both arrested for human smuggling and the hearse was seized,” he said.
NEW: Last night, Border Patrol in Tucson, AZ sector arrested two U.S. citizens they say were using a hearse to smuggle 6 illegal immigrants dressed in camouflage. Driver and passenger both arrested for human smuggling and the hearse was seized. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/lPEJ3IjfiB
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) December 14, 2021
For readers who think this is a novel idea, a Los Angeles Times newspaper article reported more than 30 years ago that illegal aliens were attempting the same tactics:
[Border patrol agents] say smugglers will go to great lengths to get as many illegal aliens through the checkpoint as they can. Some will make replicas of produce company or furniture store trucks.
Agents not only pull over the suspicious beat-up vans and older cars without license plates. Many an alien has been hidden in the trunk of a Mercedes-Benz. A few years ago, one smuggler attempted to sneak nine illegal aliens through in a limousine–dressing them in tuxedos.
Smugglers will also try to sneak their cargoes through using rental cars, taxis and even hearses. “Not necessarily in a casket, but in a hearse, sure,” Beaumet said.
“They’re crafty,” Geer said. “They will do anything they can to get their stuff through.”
That article was written in October of 1987 and was titled “Checkpoint: Agents Wage Ceaseless War on Smugglers.”
It also noted that human traffickers were using brutal techniques back then, similar to the ones we often see today:
“Smugglers treat people like animals” agent Karl Hofman said. “They’ll put babies in a 150-degree trunk, but that’s just the half of it, the tip of the iceberg. When they go to the load houses (where newly arrived illegals are held), they’re enslaved until they pay. If the money doesn’t show up, guess who’s getting beat up or raped?
“Now that’s reading between the lines–what happens to these people. They (smugglers) are in it for the money, and I think that bothers a lot of Border Patrol agents. That’s the human side of it.”
Just last week, dozens of migrants died in the back of a tractor-trailer traveling through Mexico by smugglers, seemingly heading towards the American border:
Rescue workers rushing to a highway accident found a horrific scene of death and injury after a freight truck jammed with as many as 200 migrants tipped over and crashed into the base of a steel pedestrian bridge in southern Mexico.
The migrants inside the cargo trailer were flipped, tossed and crushed into a pile that mingled the living and the dead.
By Friday, the death toll stood at 55, and authorities said at least 54 people had been injured. It was one of the worst single-day death tolls for migrants in Mexico since the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants by the Zetas drug cartel in the northern state of Tamaulipas.
In 2021, that “war on smugglers” is still ongoing despite numerous promises by every presidential president since to secure the southern border. While President Donald J. Trump arguably had the most success against smugglers in decades via several policies such as the “Remain in Mexico” program, President Joe Biden quickly ushered in a new border crisis by removing many policies instituted under the Trump administration.
While a court has since ruled that the “Remain in Mexico” policy must return, the Biden administration seems oblivious to the border crisis at hand and lacking a sense of urgency to address the problem.