As incoming U.S. president Donald Trump threatens Canada with massive tariffs over border security, an American man has pleaded guilty in a cross-border human smuggling operation.
Oregon resident Jesus Ortiz-Plata admitted to helping at least 25 people illegally cross the border from Metro Vancouver into Washington state.
Court documents show that Ortiz-Plata was involved in seven separate incidents, including helping dozens of people hide in rail cars.
According to the documents, the undocumented non-U.S. citizens paid between US$5,000 and US$10,000 each in the scheme.
According to the legal filings, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Border Patrol began investigating after they identified a phone number associated with multiple human smuggling events.
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Investigators were able to link the number to a person called “Chuy,” who they later identified as Ortiz-Plata.
U.S. law enforcement said they determined Ortiz-Plata was using hotels in the Everett, Wash. area to shelter the migrants while moving them from Seattle to Oregon, California and elsewhere in the U.S.
After arresting two Mexican nationals at the Sumas border crossing in September 2022, investigators also learned of a “Canadian-based facilitator” who told the migrants “Chuy” would pick them up on the U.S. side and take them to Oregon.
By July 2023, border agents had intercepted another 16 non-citizens at various B.C.-Washington border crossings, a number of whom were also linked to “Chuy.”
The following month, border agents at the rail facility in Blaine, Wash., spotted “x-ray anomalies of possible concealed persons inside a rail car containing bulk plastic pellets,” the documents state.
Officers who searched the rail car found 29 undocumented migrants, 28 of them from Mexico and one from Colombia. Again, several them identified “Chuy” as the person facilitating their crossing.
In November, U.S. officials arrested another 13 Mexican nationals on another train crossing the border, several of whom had been communicating with Chuy from both Mexico and Canada, according to the documents. A second man, Juan Pablo Cuellar Medina, was arrested at a nearby apartment that was used to house the migrants after they arrived in the U.S.
Homeland Security arrested Ortiz-Plata in Everett on May 23, 2024, in a vehicle with three undocumented migrants.
One of the migrants told officers he and his brother had paid $4,000 to be taken to Portland from Canada.
Several of the migrants told police they had been transported to a train station on the Canadian side of the border by unknown parties who told them to “hide in the natural voids within the railroad cars” as they crossed into the U.S.
The migrants were picked up on the U.S. side and taken to the Everett apartment, where they were not provided with food or water, according to the documents.
Ortiz-Plata ultimately signed a plea deal in exchange for a sentence of up to 18 months in jail, according to U.S. officials.
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