BRASILIA: Several native Brazilians were among the dozens of fugitives arrested in Vermont during a nationwide sweep by the U.S. Marshals Service.
Agents arrested 39 people from March 2 to April 10 during Operation Violence Reduction, according to records released to the Burlington Free Press following a public-records request.
The roundup included seven fugitives from Brazil who were taken into custody in Burlington on material-witness warrants.
Court documents state that five of the arrested Brazilians were smuggled over the Canadian border into the United States through Newport — a well-established route for human and contraband smuggling.
Ezequiel Garcia of Connecticut is accused of smuggling the five Brazilian nationals into the country.
He pleaded guilty earlier this week in U.S. District Court in Burlington to a charge he transported illegal aliens in late March, court documents stated.
Garcia faces up to five years in prison, followed by up to three years supervised release and up to a $250,000 fine. He agreed to forfeit the $4,500 he said he received for picking up the immigrants, records show. He is due for sentencing Sept. 4.
Garcia was not listed as one of the fugitives arrested by the U.S. Marshals Service, but the five Brazilian nationals he drove into Vermont were included in documents released by the law-enforcement agency.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Van de Graaf, chief of the criminal division, said undocumented immigrants are held under material-witness warrants to keep them in Vermont.
Van de Graaf was not involved with Garcia’s case but spoke generally about human smuggling cases.
“They will be deported quickly unless they are held under warrant,” he said.
Sneaking into the United States is a crime. But after a material witness testifies in a case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office releases undocumented immigrants, Van de Graaf said.
“Homeland Security deals with whether or not those people get deported,” he said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Barbara Masterson, who prosecuted the Garcia case, said any obligation the witnesses had are satisfied.
Those witnesses now are in immigration custody, she said, and could be deported.
“From that point, there is a whole laundry list of options of where they could go,” Masterson said. “I have no idea what each of them is subject to.”
In a typical human-smuggling case, a driver in a bordering country will bring undocumented immigrants near the border and tell them where to walk across into the United States, Van de Graaf said. Another driver usually is waiting on the opposite side.
Garcia had agreed to pick up five Brazilian nationals in Newport and deliver them to Boston. He expected to be paid $4,500 for the delivery, court documents stated.
According to the documents, Garcia and an unnamed individual of Brazilian descent drove to the international boundary between the U.S. and Canada. Upon arriving at the border area, Garcia signaled his car’s hazard lights. The Brazilian passenger got out of the car and went north into Canada.
Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Erik Lavallee reported seeing five people near the international border getting into a Lincoln that had pulled up near North Derby and Eagle Point roads in Newport at about 11:20 p.m. March 27, court records state.
Five individuals rushed into Garcia’s vehicle, and Garcia drove south, away from the border, documents stated.
The Border Patrol later stopped the car and the six people were arrested. The five passengers all admitted being present in the United States illegally, records show.
The five Brazilian nationals were identified as Zenilda Pacheco Do Santos Delfino, Antonio Hilson Delfino, Jose Ricardo de Souza-Zilli, Ricardo Carlos Inacio and Evaldir Viola.
While the Green Mountain state is popular for human smuggling, border patrol officers do not see as many undocumented immigrants smuggled here as officers on the southern border, Van de Graaf said.
“Most are not coming to live in Vermont,” he said. “They are just coming across the border and going to New York or Boston — larger communities where family members or friends may be.”
