EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Mexico has honored an extradition request from U.S. prosecutors for an alleged smuggler who was part of a group that charged migrants tens of thousands of dollars and robbed them as they arrived on the border.
Mexican officials on Feb. 21 surrendered to American authorities Raul Saucedo Huipio in connection to a 2021 indictment on conspiracy and alien smuggling charges filed in a federal courtroom in Arizona.
Saucedo, 49, and Ofelia Hernandez Salas, 62, allegedly held key positions in a global human smuggling business that brought to the United States “large numbers” of migrants from Bangladesh, Yemen, Pakistan, Eritrea, India, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Egypt, among others.
Saucedo and Hernandez, who were based in the Mexican border city of Mexicali, “often allegedly robbed the migrants of personal belongings while armed with guns and knives,” according to a 2021 indictment unsealed two years ago.
Later, they would provide the migrants with a makeshift ladder to climb over the border wall in designated places in California and Arizona, and a plank for them to walk over a waterway in California, court records allege.
The indictment documents at least 16 specific smuggling incidents attributed to the Hernandez Salas Transnational Criminal Organization from May 2020 to June 2021. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has also imposed sanctions on the pair believed to have pocketed tens of thousands of dollars from each migrant they helped cross into the U.S.
The Treasury said Hernandez charged the intercontinental migrants smuggling fees of between $10,000 and $70,000 – depending on where they came from. “She is involved in document forgery and corruption in Mexico to smuggle undocumented migrants into the United States via the southern border and has links to the Sinaloa Cartel,” the Treasury alleged.
Saucedo allegedly was the TCO’s coordinator with contractors in Central America who collected fees, provided lodging and arranged for the migrants to travel to Mexico. Other co-conspirators not named in the Arizona indictment collected further fees from the migrants in Chiapas, Mexico, provided fake identity documents and procured transportation to Mexicali. Court records show Saucedo was previously charged with alien smuggling in 1997 in U.S. District Court for the Southern California District.
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