The number of Cubans arriving in the U.S. illegally has risen by double digits in each of the last four years as the
multimillion-dollar human-smuggling industry has flourished.
multimillion-dollar human-smuggling industry has flourished.
MIAMI -- Federal grand juries in Key West and Miami have indicted 28 South Florida men on charges of smuggling immigrants into the United States, the U.S. attorney's office said Tuesday.
The dramatic move was apparently aimed at the thriving industry in which speedboat operators charge Cubans thousands of dollars apiece to be spirited out of their homeland.
The indictments stem from 13 smuggling operations intercepted over the last two years. The charges -- involving the thwarted smuggling of more than 225 foreign nationals, all but 11 of them Cuban -- could send each defendant to prison for as long as 10 years.
Most of the smuggled immigrants were Cubans picked up late at night on the shores of their island by "go-fast" boat captains paid as much as $10,000 a head, usually by relatives in Florida seeking reunification with kin they left behind. Thousands of Cubans make it to U.S. shores each year on boats that evade detection by the U.S. Coast Guard and Border Patrol.
Two of the defendants, Yamil Gonzalez-Rodriguez and Roberto Boffil-Rivera, were charged in a separate grand jury indictment with unlawful possession of a firearm by an illegal immigrant and lying to a federal agent.
According to a statement by U.S. Atty. R. Alexander Acosta and other federal officials, Gonzalez-Rodriguez, after smuggling four Cuban adults and a minor to Miami on April 21 for $45,000, demanded that one of them pay him an additional $25,000.
The immigrant reportedly paid $5,000 to Gonzalez-Rodriguez this month, but the alleged smuggler "was unsatisfied with the amount of payment and threatened to shoot" the immigrant with a gun owned by Boffil-Rivera, the statement says.
Federal agents clandestinely recorded the threat and arrested the two men at the scene, apparently acting with the cooperation of the unidentified immigrant.
The number of Cubans arriving in the U.S. illegally has risen by double digits in each of the last four years as the multimillion-dollar industry has flourished. Unlike other nationalities arriving without visas, Cubans who make it to U.S. land are allowed to stay and apply for legal permanent residency under the U.S. government's "wet-foot, dry-foot policy."
carol.williams@latimes.com
The dramatic move was apparently aimed at the thriving industry in which speedboat operators charge Cubans thousands of dollars apiece to be spirited out of their homeland.
The indictments stem from 13 smuggling operations intercepted over the last two years. The charges -- involving the thwarted smuggling of more than 225 foreign nationals, all but 11 of them Cuban -- could send each defendant to prison for as long as 10 years.
Most of the smuggled immigrants were Cubans picked up late at night on the shores of their island by "go-fast" boat captains paid as much as $10,000 a head, usually by relatives in Florida seeking reunification with kin they left behind. Thousands of Cubans make it to U.S. shores each year on boats that evade detection by the U.S. Coast Guard and Border Patrol.
Two of the defendants, Yamil Gonzalez-Rodriguez and Roberto Boffil-Rivera, were charged in a separate grand jury indictment with unlawful possession of a firearm by an illegal immigrant and lying to a federal agent.
According to a statement by U.S. Atty. R. Alexander Acosta and other federal officials, Gonzalez-Rodriguez, after smuggling four Cuban adults and a minor to Miami on April 21 for $45,000, demanded that one of them pay him an additional $25,000.
The immigrant reportedly paid $5,000 to Gonzalez-Rodriguez this month, but the alleged smuggler "was unsatisfied with the amount of payment and threatened to shoot" the immigrant with a gun owned by Boffil-Rivera, the statement says.
Federal agents clandestinely recorded the threat and arrested the two men at the scene, apparently acting with the cooperation of the unidentified immigrant.
The number of Cubans arriving in the U.S. illegally has risen by double digits in each of the last four years as the multimillion-dollar industry has flourished. Unlike other nationalities arriving without visas, Cubans who make it to U.S. land are allowed to stay and apply for legal permanent residency under the U.S. government's "wet-foot, dry-foot policy."
carol.williams@latimes.com
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