The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) alerted the community of Tijuana about a tactic used by organized crime to get people to cross drugs in this border.

Through newspapers, ads are being placed hiring carriers apparently for legitimate companies. The reality is that smugglers are recruiting people who, without even knowing, will try to cross the U.S. border with a car full of drugs.

According to Lauren Mack, spokeswoman of the ICE, since last year's February, ICE has detected at least 50 of these cases through Otay and San Ysidro borders.

"Smugglers who use classifieds to recruit drivers is not new", said Mack. "However, in the last year we´ve noted an increase on these cases and we´ve decided to track them".

This dynamic is unprecedented in the border since, according to ICE, there are no similar cases recorded in any other port of entrance to the country such as Texas or Arizona.

When the agents questioned people who have fallen for the scam jobs, they have noticed that they had no idea about the contents within the car, by which they were paid to cross the border.

The reason why organized crime hires people that are unaware of what they are doing is mainly because they don't look nervous at the time of the inspection, and second, because they get paid very little.

For example, when the drug dealer hires someone that is aware that will cross the border with drugs in the vehicle, the carrier gets paid $1,500 per carry. On the other hand, naive carriers that are unaware of what they´re crossing, get paid between 50 and 100 dollars per day, said Mack.

Aware of this issue, ICE started a prevention campaign, placing informative ads for 30 days through the most important newspapers in Tijuana.

"If it worked for them, maybe it will work for us too", said the ICE spokeswoman in regard to the classifieds.

In ICE´s classifieds, there are messages such as, "Don´t be a victim of smugglers traps", "Don't take the risk of losing your border crosser card privileges", "Report any suspicious activity to your public order office".

In relation to this, Lauren Mack asked the community to be alert against this situation since there are smugglers that will try to take advantage of people looking for an honest job.

"The most important recommendation is to use your common sense", she said. "If someone offers you a job but arrange to meet you in a restaurant, a parking lot, or a coffee shop for job details, this could be an alert sign".

The office representative also recommended people to always corroborate the seriousness of the business.

Likewise, she recommended reporting to a border agent about any suspicion of illicit activity.

editorial@sandiegored.com

original text : San Diego Red

Translation : Daniel Blanco