Monday, April 12, 2010

CBP Catches Second Fugitive in 2 Days

Both Attempting to Use Legitimate Documents that Were Not Their Own

April 09, 2010 - San Diego — U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the San Ysidro port of entry yesterday caught a fugitive with a $5.5 million bail warrant for his arrest in Texas after he attempted to enter the country using someone else’s permanent resident card.

At about 1:30 p.m. on April 8, the man entered the San Ysidro pedestrian processing area, and presented the CBP officer with a legitimate permanent resident card.

Upon examining the document, the officer determined that the person pictured on the card was not the same person standing in front of him.

Officers took the man aside and used his fingerprints to establish his identity as Javier Rodriguez-Rocha, a 27-year-old Mexican citizen and resident of Lazaro Cardenas in Michoacán, Mexico, with no legal documents to enter the United States.

Officers at that time also discovered a warrant, set with $5.5 million bail, out of the Harris County Sherriff’s Office near Houston, Texas for possession of marijuana in an amount between 50 to 2,000 pounds.

CBP officers took the man into custody; he is being held at the San Diego County Jail.

This apprehension follows on the heels of the apprehension Wednesday morning of a 23-year-old man with three active, no-bail, drug-related warrants for his arrest. Officers caught the fugitive when he attempted to use a legitimate U.S. passport that had been altered by replacing the rightful owner’s photo with a photo of the fugitive.

From October 1, 2009 through the end of February 2010, CBP officers at the nation’s ports of entry have reported encountering 9,780 persons with fraudulent documents of some kind. This represents a two percent increase from last fiscal year, when CBP officers reported 9,578 persons with fraudulent documents from October 1, 2008 through the end of February 2009.

CBP officers within the San Diego Field Office, which includes the Port of San Diego and the land border crossings at San Ysidro, Otay Mesa, Calexico, Tecate, and Andrade, accounted for 81 percent of the nation’s fraudulent documents incidents reported so far in fiscal year 2010. CBP officers within the San Diego Field Office reported encountering 7,961 persons with fraudulent documents, an increase of six percent over the same period last year.

In fiscal year 2009, CBP officers within the San Diego Field Office apprehended 1,925 individuals with outstanding felony warrants for such crimes as homicide, robbery and assault by local, state or federal police agencies.

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