More Chinese trying to enter illegally — from Mexico

TUCSON, Ariz. — Amid an overall drop in arrests of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, an intriguing anomaly has cast a new light on human smuggling: Authorities report an almost tenfold spike in the number of Chinese people caught in the southern Arizona desert, the busiest smuggling corridor on the international line.

Several groups of illegal immigrants from China have been arrested in southern Arizona in recent days, part of an increasing trend that U.S. Border Patrol agents said Monday was being fed by smugglers recruiting tourists to Central and South America.

The arrests included two Chinese found among a large group of migrants who entered the county from Mexico on Friday. Three more Chinese were found Saturday, a group that included four Chinese was captured Sunday and four more were arrested early Monday.

All were discovered close to the border near Nogales, Ariz.

Between Oct. 1, 2008, and the end of August, agents captured 261 illegal immigrants from China in the patrol's Tucson sector in southern Arizona.

Just 30 Chinese were caught in the same area during the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2008.

The numbers are still tiny compared with the number of Mexican migrants caught. In the 12 months ending Sept. 3, Border Patrol agents in the Tucson sector arrested more than 241,000 suspected illegal immigrants.

Chinese belong to a category known in the Border Patrol as OTMs: other than Mexicans. And they are big business for smuggling gangs that increasingly have overlapped with Mexico's violent drug mafias.

Mexicans typically pay smugglers about $1,500. The fees for Central Americans and South Americans often reach $6,000. A group of Haitians, intercepted a few years ago in Tucson after three nights spent hiking in circles in a canyon, had coughed up $10,000; another $10,000 was to have been paid upon arrival in the Chicago area.

The Chinese — nearly all of them from Fujian province — pay the most. They often have to work off debts of $30,000 to $70,000 over several years as indentured servants in the sweatshops and kitchens of New York and other cities.

Sophisticated Asian mafias organize intricate journeys to the U.S. A typical route leads from Beijing to Rome to Caracas, Venezuela, to Mexico City to the border, according to Matthew Allen, chief agent of the Phoenix office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"It's much more elaborate" than smuggling Latin Americans, Allen said. "Waiting in hotel rooms, calls on cellphones, code words. ... The trend (in increased arrests) stands out as apprehensions are going down overall."

Asian smugglers favor air routes, exploiting favorable visa policies for Chinese travelers in countries including Ecuador, Honduras and Venezuela, which are hubs for their travel to Mexico, officials said.

The evolving alliance between traffickers of drugs and of immigrants — once separate specialties — is complex. According to investigators, drug lords use their firepower to control turf and tax others for the use of border corridors, known in Spanish as plazas, charging $50,000 to $100,000 a week.

"The drug-trafficking organizations in the plazas control who smuggles, what they smuggle, where they smuggle," Allen said.

At times, when drug mafias are at war or when moving drug loads is difficult, muscling in on the human- smuggling racket brings easy profit and less risk, said field- operations supervisor Juventino Pacheco of the patrol's international liaison unit in Nogales.