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DETROIT, MI – Robert Johnson was down on his luck and short on cash last month when a man named Hunt offered him $800 to smuggle two Chinese immigrants in the trunk of his car into the United States through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. But what looked like easy money quickly turned into a legal nightmare for the laid-off Windsor auto mechanic, 29, who joined the growing ranks of Canadian and U.S. citizens arrested at the border recently, accused of smuggling Chinese and other Asian immigrants into the United States.

Since May, about a dozen otherwise law-abiding citizens, including a Wayne County juvenile detention officer, have been arrested at the tunnel or Ambassador Bridge and charged with smuggling Asian nationals into the country. In most cases, the smuggling suspects told authorities they were offered $150 to $4,000 by strangers for what initially looked like easy cash. ‘Getting paid $1,000 for 20 minutes of work sounds like an easy way to make money, but the implications are tremendous if you get caught,’ Johnson’s lawyer, Mark Magidson of Detroit, said Monday.

Court papers filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit indicate that Johnson plans to plead guilty soon to bringing illegal immigrants to the United States for private financial gain, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Chief Ronald Smith of U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the recent influx of Chinese immigrant smuggling arrests in Detroit follow a surge in arrests at the border crossing in Buffalo, N.Y. He said the smugglers may have moved their operation to Detroit after authorities in Buffalo figured out what they were doing. ‘When we catch on to how they’re doing the smuggling, they change their techniques,’ said Smith, who is based in Detroit. U.S. officials estimate that from 14,500 to 17,500 people — mainly women and children — are smuggled annually into the United States.

Many wind up in sweatshops, domestic servitude, agricultural labor camps or prostitution. Most come from Asia, Europe and Latin America. Smith said most of the arrests in Detroit involved immigrants who came voluntarily in search of opportunity. Johnson was arrested around 3:30 p.m. Dec. 8 after driving through the tunnel in his 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix. He told a customs agent that he was going shopping in the United States, but the agent sent him to a secondary inspection because he appeared nervous and tried to use a special express inspection lane. At the secondary inspection, agents found two Chinese nationals in the trunk.

He told agents that the mystery man named Hunt offered to pay him $800 for smuggling the immigrants, taking them to the Greyhound bus terminal in Detroit and buying them tickets to New York City. He said he needed the money. It’s unclear what happened to the immigrants.

Source: Detroit Free Press

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