For the week of May 29 - June 4, 2002

Two more are arrested for alleged smuggling of aliens

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By PETER BOLTZ
and GREG MOORE
Express Staff Writers

Two more people have been arrested in connection with last week’s bust of a ring allegedly operating in the Wood River Valley to smuggle illegal aliens from Mexico and forge identity documents.

According to Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling, Javier Chavez, 30, and Humberto Herrera, 21, both Hailey residents, turned themselves in to the sheriff’s office May 22 after they were informed they were wanted.

Six people were arrested May 21, when agents from the FBI, Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Border Patrol and Idaho State Police, along with Blaine County Sheriff’s deputies, descended on four locations in Hailey, Bellevue and the Sun Tree Hollow trailer park south of Ketchum at about 6 a.m.

All eight were arraigned Thursday in federal court in Boise on charges of conspiracy to smuggle aliens, conspiracy to produce and sell false identification documents and conspiracy to launder the proceeds of illegal activity.

A ninth person, Juan Pablo Ceja, remains at large.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Rafael Gonzalez said some of the defendants are legal aliens and some are in the country illegally.

In addition to the arrests, 29 allegedly illegal aliens were detained for deportation. Jean McNeil, public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boise, said the INS would not release their names or whereabouts.

The 20-count grand jury indictment, returned May 16 in Boise, charges that members of the group transported illegal aliens across the Mexican border to Idaho for up to $1,400 each, and that they sold false Alien Registration and Social Security cards for $140 to $150 a set. It states that many of the alleged illegal arrangements took place at the La Mexicana store and check-cashing business at 400 N. Main St. in Hailey, between spring of 2000 and spring of 2001.

The indictment charges that the defendants have been laundering the proceeds from those kinds of activities and from the sale of illegal drugs since at least as far back as 1997.

It states that property belonging to the defendants and used to commit the alleged crimes shall be forfeited to the United States. That includes $1 million in cash, land located at 1021 Snowflake Drive and at 160 Labrador Lane in Hailey, and a U.S. Bank account in the name of Francisco Herrera, doing business as La Mexicana.

A trial for all defendants is scheduled for July 22.

According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, federal Magistrate Judge Mikel Williams ordered five of the defendants detained pending a bail hearing today, May 29. A hearing for Chavez is set for June 3. Two of the defendants, Lucia Herrera and Audelia Herrera, were released pending trial.

 

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