[NYTr] Stealing Boats to Use in People-Smuggling a Major Miami Mafia Activity

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Granma International - Dec 5, 2007
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/diciembre/mier5/lanchas.html



ENCOURAGED BY THE CUBAN ADJUSTMENT ACT

Illegal emigration mafia stealing boats from Miami

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD
Granma International staff writer

JUICY business: Cuban-American drug traffickers who control the
profitable illegal immigration racket, which benefits from a U.S. law
called the Cuban Adjustment Act, steal the speed boats and luxury
yachts that they use for their criminal activities from Miami and other
cities in the Florida peninsula.

Immigrants "are no longer arriving as rafters on U.S. beaches; instead,
they are brought over by trafficking rings that have unleashed a wave
of boat thefts," according to the French news agency AFP in an article
datelined in Miami.

This year, more than 300 boats were stolen in Miami-Dade County alone,
according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Most of them are used for trafficking immigrants, according to several
government sources. Traffickers "bring people in stolen boats, and in
many cases, in go-fast boats," according to Luis Díaz, a Coast Guard
spokesman in Miami.

The most sought-after boats by thieves are medium or small yachts, no
more than 12 meters long, which are easier to maneuver, especially
speedboats, according to AFP.

The U.S. law, which is aimed at encouraging the illegal emigration of
Cubans, grants them privileges that no other immigrant group receives
when illegally crossing the U.S. border with Mexico.

In addition, this lucrative trafficking in people has led to a bloody
war in recent months between criminal clans linked to the
Cuban-American mafia.

Bello Melchor Rodríguez y Carrillo, federal prosecutor in the Mexican
state of Quintana Roo, revealed a few weeks ago that the city of
Merida, Yucatan, is the Cuban mafia’s center of financial operations.

Cuban-Americans killed in recent weeks include Manuel "El Mani" Duarte
Díaz, Luis Lázaro Lara Morejón, his friend María Elena Carrillo Sáenz,
Jesús Aguilar Aguilar, Edwin Park Gómez and Maximiliano Rey Mota.

Lara Morejón was the liaison who received funds from the United States
for trafficking carried out by Duarte Díaz, who was murdered in the
Yucatan capital near the offices of the National Migration Institute.
He later ensured payment for the polleros (smugglers) who bring Cubans
to Quintana Roo’s coasts.

According to several sources, one of the gangs involved hired the thugs
of Los Zetas, the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, to execute its rivals.

The lime-covered, handcuffed bodies of Aguilar, Park and Carrillo Sáenz
were found in a ditch near the Cancun-Merida highway, a site known as
the "Los Zetas cemetery."

The FBI in Miami has stood out for its inertia in the face of
Cuban-American mafia activities since the start of these gruesome
events.

Translated by Granma International