Michael Cutler: Gang Heists Show Need for Strong, Funded Immigration Enforcement

By Andrew Cochran

Michael Cutler asked me to post his views the relationship between a story in today's New York Daily News, a similar case that he worked when he was a senior Immigration & Naturalization Service agent, and this week's hearing on the merger of federal immigration enforcement agencies, at which he will testify. The NYDN article (appropriately titled "Jewels of the Vile") is about South American gangs who are touring NYC and targeting diamond dealers for robbery. Michael's comments:

The article brought back memories that I would like to share with you. I recall attempting to initiate an investigation into South American baggage robbers with the cooperation of the Port Authority Police many years ago. My partner and I responded to a radio call from our bosses to respond to Kennedy Airport to question an individual who was identified by the Port Authority Police as being a baggage thief who was claiming to be from Puerto Rico.

He ultimately abandoned his false claimed to being a United States citizen and admitted to being an illegal alien from Colombia. He subsequently took us back to his apartment where we encountered his partner, also an illegal alien from Colombia. Pursuant to a consent search we found some 83 items of stolen property with an estimated value of more than $20,000. One of the items, a camera stolen from a Japanese businessman was ultimately returned to him. He had filed a report about the missing camera and when notified about the camera, he immediately flew from Japan to New York to retrieve the camera. As it turned out, there was an inscription in Japanese engraved on the back of the camera. It was from the man's wife who had just died of cancer and was the last gift she would ever give him.

Our search also yielded photos and addresses of a number of 'associates' of these two criminals. We contacted the Port Authority police detectives, they showed up at the apartment in Queens, New York, seized the stolen property and took the two Colombian nationals into custody and I lodged immigration detainers against them so that when their criminal cases were completed, presumably they would be convicted and sentenced to jail time, they would come into INS custody for deportation. The detectives told us that they had a growing problem with South American baggage thieves who worked the "circuit." They would go from city to city plying their trade of stealing baggage and picking pockets and then travel from New York to Houston, Texas to Chicago, Illinois to Miami, Florida and back to New York when they started to get to recognizable in any one place. They asked us to work with them to help identify these criminals and break up the ring to which they belonged. My partner and I thought that it sounded like an excellent idea.

When we discussed the concept of the investigation of the Colombian baggage thieves with our bosses we were told that the New York office would probably not be happy that we had "wasted so much time on this case." (We spent 10 hours inventorying the obviously stolen property but only indicated we worked about 5 hours of overtime in clearing up the paperwork, etc.) It is also worth noting that federal agents get paid for no more than 25% of their base pay for overtime no matter how many additional hours they work, so this didn't cost the government a single extra penny! I used to say that the former INS was the agency that refused to take itself seriously and so the bad guys didn't take the INS seriously, either.

Anyway, we were summoned to the office and berated for running a "lost and found." The Port Authority cops were truly upset that we couldn't assist them in trying to dismantle the gang these guys belonged to.

This happened over 20 years ago and the sad thing is that if we had only done what we should have done back then, many of the people who have been victimized by these crooks could have been spared. The article points out that many of the armed jewelry robbers got their start as criminals by being baggage robbers. It is frustrating to think about what we could have accomplished if we had worked for an agency that had decent leadership and resources.

Today the merger of ICE with Customs with the attendant de-emphasis on immigration law enforcement and virtually no resources, exacerbates this problem, placing more Americans at risk and not only from the terrorists but the other low-life criminal aliens who still find America to be the "Land of Opportunity" at the expense of American citizens.

What an outrage!

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