Conspirators linked to two smuggling events involving eight different citizens of India
A federal grand jury in Seattle recently indicted four people for a conspiracy to smuggle non-U.S. citizens across the US-Canada border for profit.
U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, Tessa M. Gorman made the announcement on April 25. She said that the group was connected to two smuggling episodes in November and December 2023. The four named in the indictment were arrested Seattle, Chicago, and Santa Rosa, California. They will be transported to Seattle for arraignment in the weeks ahead.
According to a criminal complaint and the indictment, the four conspirators have been linked to two smuggling events involving eight different citizens of India.
The defendants are charged with conspiracy to bring in and transport non-citizens for profit, eight counts of bringing a non-citizen into the U.S. at a place other than a designated Port of Entry and eight counts of attempted illegal transportation of a non-citizen for financial gain.
The defendants are: Rajat Rajat, 26, of Santa Rosa, California who was arrested in Chicago; Sushil Kumar, 35, of Santa Rosa, California; Bobby Joe Green, 67, of Santa Rosa, California; and Sneha, 20, a citizen of India who is in the U.S. on a student visa and goes by just her last name. She was arrested in Renton, Washington state, and released on an appearance bond.
According to records filed in the case, on November 27, 2023, a motion-activated camera caught multiple people jumping a fence near the Boundary Village Apartments. The fence is a quarter mile east of Peace Arch Park. Border Patrol agents near the apartments saw five people run to a white minivan. The vehicle was stopped by Border Patrol. Five citizens of India were in the van with Bobby Joe Green as the driver. The investigation revealed that Kumar and Rajat directed the non-citizens on where and how to cross the border, and that Rajat paid Green to transport the non-citizens from the border. Rajat asked for monetary payments from the non-citizens for being smuggled into the U.S.
Similarly, in December 2023, Rajat contacted three citizens of India in Peace Arch Park and allegedly directed them how to cross through the park and get into a car driven by Sneha. The car was stopped, and the non-citizens were interviewed. They indicated they had promised to make monetary payments to be smuggled into the U.S. Rajat was picked up near the border after Sneha and the three Indian nationals had been taken into custody.
All of the charges in the indictment are punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
The case is being investigated by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the U.S. Border Patrol.
LAST week, on May 24, Gorman announced that two men connected to a US-Canada border people smuggling scheme made their initial appearances in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
Jesus Ortiz-Plata, 45, of Independence, Oregon, and Juan Pablo Cuellar Medina, 35, of Everett, Washington, were arrested on May 23 with three non-citizens who had been smuggled into the United States from Canada. The arrests are the result of a lengthy investigation by Homeland Security Investigation’s Border Security Enforcement Team (BEST).
“These defendants have allegedly been linked to an extremely dangerous smuggling scheme where people are loaded into freight cars on trains traveling from Canada into the U.S.,” said Gorman. “Being locked in a freight train car is dangerous – there is no control over the heat, cold, or ventilation, and people can be injured or killed by shifting freight. In one dangerous instance last August, some 29 people were rescued from a boxcar filled with plastic pellets.”
Since late 2022, as Border Patrol and investigators encountered non-citizens who had illegally attempted to cross the border, a phone number later linked to Ortiz-Plata kept coming up as the number the non-citizens were supposed to contact. Ortiz-Plata was identified, and law enforcement got court permission to locate the signal from his cell phone.
On May 23, Ortiz-Plata traveled from his home in Oregon and was followed from Seattle to an apartment in Everett. He left the apartment with three men – all non-citizens. All four were taken into custody. Two had crossed the border in a freight train car and one claimed he had walked across the border and been picked up on the U.S. side. Medina was the resident of the apartment where the men had been staying. Medina was arrested and was identified by one non-citizens as the person who had picked him up after they crossed into the U.S.
Conspiracy to commit illegal transportation of a non-citizen for private financial gain is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The case is being investigated by Homeland Security Investigations, the Border Security Enforcement Team, U.S. Border Patrol, and Border Patrol Air and Marine Group.
