A Bangladeshi native has pleaded guilty to conspiring to traffick illegal aliens through Mexico and to the United States.
"With the plea, Moktar Hossain, 31, admitted that from March 2017 to August 2018, he conspired to bring and brought Bangladeshi nationals to the United States at the Texas border in exchange for payment. Hossain operated out of Monterrey, Mexico, where he housed aliens before sending them on the last leg of the journey to the United States. Hossain paid drivers to transport the aliens to the U.S. border, and gave them instructions how to cross the Rio Grande River," the Department of Justice released in a statement Wednesday.
While Hossain never physically smuggled illegal aliens into the United States, he did facilitate the journey by housing them in Mexico.
“Human smuggling is a national security threat,” Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski said about the case. “Today’s plea makes clear that defendants who smuggle illegal aliens across the United States border for profit should expect to face the consequences in a United States courtroom.”
As more and more smugglers take advantage of weak and easily exploitable U.S. asylum laws, the more illegal immigration Border Patrol agents have seen from countries outside of Central America and Mexico.
In June, the Associated Press reported a record number of illegal aliens are traveling through Mexico and to the United States from Africa.
Undaunted by a dangerous journey over thousands of miles, people fleeing economic hardship and human rights abuses in African countries are coming to the U.S.-Mexico border in unprecedented numbers, surprising Border Patrol agents more accustomed to Spanish-speaking migrants.
Officials in Texas and even Maine are scrambling to absorb the sharp increase in African migrants. They are coming to America after flying across the Atlantic Ocean to South America and then embarking on an often harrowing overland journey.
In one recent week, agents in the Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector stopped more than 500 African migrants found walking in separate groups along the arid land after splashing across the Rio Grande, children in tow.
Meanwhile, Congress left town for the August recess without passing legislation addressing the current crisis at the U.S. southern border.