The Enemy Within

Last Tuesday afternoon, the squad was working a case involving a suspected marijuana middleman. As police later learned, a few days earlier, he'd allegedly brokered a deal between a group of sellers and two buyers for 150 pounds of pot. But when the parties gathered at a suburban house, the two buyers held up the others and made off with $40,000 worth of dope and cash. The man tried to escape, but a woman at the house pulled a gun on him. "You're not leaving," she said, according to the middleman's subsequent account to police. "You set up this deal." The stolen goods were now his debt. Eventually released, he scrambled to cobble together $40,000 worth of possessions—three vehicles, 10 pounds of pot, some cash—while a man who called himself "Chuco" rang him every hour. But it wasn't enough. On Tuesday morning, Chuco arrived at the man's house. "I've got to go," the man told his girlfriend, according to her statements to police. "If I don't pay, they're going to hurt me." His abductors, he said, worked for El Chapo (an unconfirmed allegation).

Later that day, the man's girlfriend arrived at the police station. Sleepless and frantic, she fielded repeated calls from her boyfriend, who pleaded for her to raise additional cash. The cops urged her to remain calm. "I know you are stressed, but you need to keep talking," said one of the detectives. "You are the only one who can do the negotiating." She had already called some family members and asked them to draw money from an equity line. But it wasn't arriving quickly enough. "I don't have it yet, baby," she told her boyfriend on a subsequent call, as he grew more distressed. "I'm doing everything I can."

Unbeknownst to the woman, the kidnapping squad had received information on her boyfriend's possible location. As cops approached the suspected house a little after midnight, an SUV suddenly sped away. Police pursued it and pulled it over. "Tell us where he is!" a detective told the passengers. Just then, a Chevy Impala took off from the house. Another chase ensued, and eventually the driver was forced to stop. Inside were four passengers, with the middleman in the rear, flanked by two men armed with weapons. Back at the station, detectives questioned the parties; as of late last week, charges were likely against four abductors, but not the victim, due to a lack of evidence in the suspected marijuana deal. But now he's on the cops' radar, says Burgett. "We do proactive follow-up on victims as well."

Though much of Phoenix's kidnapping epidemic stems from alleged drug deals gone awry, plenty are linked to the human-smuggling trade. That work used to be dominated by small "mom and pop" outfits, but in time, the cartels have muscled in on it. Any group that wants to use their trafficking routes has to pay up—about $2,000 per week for Mexicans and $10,000 per week for "exotics," like Chinese and Middle Easterners, says Richard, the Phoenix detective. That added business cost has encouraged some smugglers to try to extort more money from their human loads—known as pollos, or "chickens"—once they've crossed the border. More and more, pollos may change hands several times among dueños, or "owners"—a new, more violent breed of smugglers. The drop houses used to stash immigrants are also becoming more barbaric.

One recent night, the Human Smuggling Unit of the Maricopa County sheriff's office received a tip on a drop house in a middle-class neighborhood in Phoenix. Relatives of an immigrant being held there had received an extortion call demanding $3,500. Joined by a SWAT team, the unit made its move, breaching windows and doors, which were boarded up (a typical precaution taken by smugglers). A half dozen men tried to escape but were grabbed, says Lt. Joe Sousa, the unit commander. Inside were several dozen illegal immigrants, all shoeless and famished. Authorities confiscated two pistols, a sawed-off shotgun and a Taser-like device—"used against people when they're put on the phone, begging their relatives for cash," says Sousa. It was a good bust, he says, but "within a week or two, that same organization will be back up and running." Sousa moved to Phoenix because he thought it was a nice place to raise a family. But the violence is out of control, he says. "Soon as I retire, I'm out of here."

Many area residents who have had encounters with the smuggling world share the sentiment. At a takedown of a suspected drop house a few days earlier in nearby Avondale, a neighbor became inconsolable describing the terror he experienced living next door to what locals fear is a home to ruthless criminals. "It's been hell," said the man, who refused to be named because he was scared. "I have five kids. I've been sleeping with two machine guns under my bed for two years." He's planning to foreclose on his property and flee with his family as soon as possible. Despite the bust, the smugglers "will be back," he said. "Right now, they are headed to the border, they'll chill out for a month, and they'll be back." As overwrought as he may have been, he was probably right.

With Catharine Skipp, John Barry and Dan Ephron

© 2009