MIAMI – Federal court documents obtained by Local 10 News on Wednesday identify the three men suspected of smuggling more than two dozen migrants — mostly from China — into South Florida.
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A federal criminal complaint states that an astute tipster in the Snapper Creek Lakes neighborhood of Coral Gables noticed what looked like an abduction at around 9:30 a.m. Friday: A man “forcibly shov(ing)” a woman into the back of a Toyota Corolla with Texas tags, parked close to a U-Haul van.
Authorities said the concerned citizen took cellphone video and found a Coral Gables police officer to report it to. Police were able to track down the vehicles to the 6700 block of LeJeune Road, where they took 28 people into custody, including the suspected smugglers: Keiner Cicilia-Rodriguez, Lucas Sedeno-Rodriguez and Jose Luis Villares.
Federal agents said Villares, 55, was driving the U-Haul van, which had 22 migrants inside and windows covered by cardboard boxes in an attempt to conceal them.
They said Sedeno-Rodriguez, 52, was driving the Corolla, with Cicilia-Rodriguez, 39, in the passenger’s seat. Three migrants were in the back seat.
All three suspects are Cuban nationals. Besides China, the migrants they helped smuggle were from Ecuador and Brazil, authorities said.
The complaint states that they had come in by boat from the Bahamas and sources said they landed near the Snapper Creek Canal.
According to the complaint, Sedeno-Rodriguez told investigators that a man named “Miggy,” whom “he knows to be involved in human smuggling from the Bahamas,” approached him in Homestead and offered him $5,000 to pick up the migrants and take them to another location.
Agents said that Sedeno-Rodriguez told them that a man named “Pito” was to provide the destination location and the cash.
Villares told investigators that Sedeno-Rodriguez recruited him for the operation, offering him $500 to help transport the undocumented migrants, the complaint states.
Agents said Villares told them that Cicilia-Rodriguez rented the U-Haul van and that the plan was to drop the migrants off “near a hardware store” somewhere in Miami-Dade.
According to the complaint, Cicilia-Rodriguez admitted to being the owner of the Corolla and said the three had met that morning at Sedeno-Rodriguez’s home.
All three men are facing charges of transporting, moving or attempting to transport or move an alien within the United States in Miami federal court.
The three were taken to the Dania Beach Border Patrol station Friday and later booked into the Broward County jail.
According to federal prison records, Villares and Sedeno-Rodriguez were being held in the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami as of Wednesday.
Cicilia-Rodriguez wasn’t listed in Broward Sheriff’s Office or federal inmate databases.