Officials say group used illegal visas, moved people from Mideast to U.S.

By RICARDO SANDOVAL / The Dallas Morning News

MEXICO CITY – Mexico's one-time consul in Lebanon was arrested this week in a widening investigation by Mexican authorities into an immigrant-smuggling ring that reportedly obtained illegal visas and ferried migrants from the Middle East to the United States.

Imelda Ortiz Abdala is charged with smuggling immigrants and issuing unwarranted visas while she headed Mexico's consular offices in Lebanon between 1998 and 2001.

The Mexican daily newspaper El Universal on Friday reported that one of the migrants Ms. Ortiz Abdala aided was described by government sources in the newspaper as a "presumed Muslim extremist." But on Friday Mexican government officials said they have no records on the man or his whereabouts.

U.S. officials in Mexico City and Washington did not answer inquiries about the smuggling ring or the presumed extremist.

Mexican officials said the investigation will continue and may yield several more arrests.

Earlier in the week Mexican authorities took into custody Salim Boughader – a Mexican citizen of Lebanese origin – and two other people who federal officials say ran a human-smuggling operation that aided Middle Eastern immigrants. The trio was picked up in Tijuana and transferred to a federal detention center near Mexico City.

Until last week, Mr. Boughader was in U.S. custody, but he was deported after a year in prison for a previous smuggling conviction. He was rearrested in Tijuana as part of the ongoing Mexican inquiry.

Government officials on both sides of the border hailed the arrests as evidence of the close cooperation between the two countries in ensuring the security of the 2,500-mile long U.S.-Mexican border.

The Tijuana investigation "is a good example of the type of coordination that is important not just to the United States, but for Mexico, in terms of protecting Mexican territory and the safety of its citizens," U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza said to Mexican reporters in Washington.

"You can be sure that Mexico's will and conviction does not waver and that the effort will be as or more intense as it has been until now," said Mexico's Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha during Cabinet-level talks in Washington this week.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, no migrant suspected of terrorist links or activity has been found crossing into the United States from Mexico. Mexican intelligence services and police have fielded dozens of investigative queries from U.S. authorities since the attacks, and no credible threat to border security has been found, officials said.

Yet officials on both sides of the border are concerned that corruption could allow terrorists to bypass border security. In the last two years, U.S. authorities have busted illegal visa-sales by officials in consular offices along the border, while Mexico has found dubious visas issued by consuls in the Middle East and Cuba. Both the United States and Mexico have arrested several former consular employees.