On Monday it was announced that two former Border Patrol agents, Raul and Fidel Villarreal, who are brothers, were arrested in Tijuana more than two years after fleeing the country when they somehow found out they were under investigation for human smuggling.
In the New York Times/FRONTLINE piece published in May, we wrote about los hermanos Villarreal and how their case was demonstrative of the challenges that the different internal affairs and corruption task force folks down at the border face.
In Tuesday’s Times, another article ran that recounted the arrest and the charges, as listed in an 18-count indictment against the Brothers Villarreal and their accomplices — two others men were arrested with them in a gated apartment complex in Tijuana, not far from the U.S. Consulate. Raul acted as a smuggler in a public service announcement produced for the Mexican government that warned about the dangers of using a coyote, or human smuggler, to cross unauthorized immigrants into the U.S.
Raul — pretending to be the smuggler locked up in jail — talks about all the different nationalities he had crossed and sometimes they die, but it’s not his fault. Good stuff. More to come.
