A few years back, I was working intel out of the Buffalo Station. My partner and I got a phone call from a local PD out in cow country. The small town police department had just run into an unusual case. A boyfriend and girlfriend had driven to the police station hoping the cops could serve as some sort of marriage/relationship counseling service as the two were in the midst of a screaming match. A novel concept, sit back and let the domestic violence case come to you, you don’t have to go out and find it.
One of the first things the cops do is to run the two of them for criminal history. They find the male (I’ll call him Juan) had been arrested by the Border Patrol in Vermont for being in the country illegally. After being charged, he had posted bond or had his bond reduced to zero and been released. (Imagine if a criminal was charged with grand theft auto, he was allowed to post bond, and drove off in the car he allegedly stole. This is a bit like what happens with illegal aliens. They can be charged with being in the country illegally, then post bond and remain in the country illegally. The crime is their presence on the Magic Dirt).
We looked through our records and because Juan was “in proceedings”, we technically couldn’t do anything with him until he had his court case, a case that was something like two years down the way due to the immigration backlog. In fact, he was probably arrested at the tail end of the Obama administration which would mean that he probably didn’t even have to post bond. A lot of illegal aliens were having their bonds reduced to zero and walked out the door if the alien had no previous convictions. That’s different than never having been arrested before. I digress.
The local cops had said the female complainant wanted to talk to us, so, we sat down with her. I’ll call her Jane. She was a white girl, a little on the heavy side, not very attractive and may have had some sort of learning disability. She told us the following story; she had been dating a Mexican field hand in the small town. She was in love with him and he got a job in Pennsylvania. So, the pair moved down there. She spent two weeks sitting in a trailer on the farm while her boyfriend worked during the day. After two weeks, she had gone stir crazy and wanted to come back to New York state and home. So Jane contacted a woman named Lupe about getting a ride back to Western New York. Why Lupe? Lupe was an immigrant herself from some place like Guatemala and Lupe made money on the side by serving as an off the books taxi service for illegal aliens. Lupe told Jane she’d give her a ride home, but instead, Lupe drove Jane to Vermont and another farm. There at this other farm far from home, Lupe threatened to leave Jane there, unless, Jane agreed to have sex with the field hands. Reluctant, but also scared to be out of state in a place she didn’t know and being berated by Lupe, Jane gave in. Jane told us she had sex with approximately 100 men in three days. Personally, I think Jane was exaggerating, but she was adamant that was the case. A lot of suspects exaggerate thinking they’ll get more sympathy. What I do think happened is that she was forced to have sex with so many men that she lost count.
Lupe was charging the men $60 a time. At the end of the ordeal, Lupe gave Jane $200 and finally drove Jane back to her parents’ home. However, Lupe also threatened to tell Jane’s parents what Jane had done unless she cooperated. At that point, Lupe had control of Jane’s life forcing her to work as a prostitute for field hands, mainly illegal aliens, in the Western New York area.
Jane eventually left the control of Lupe, sort of…Jane got pregnant and became the boyfriend of Juan, the same guy who had come with her to the police station. Apparently, Jane and Juan had had a fight earlier. Jane had gone over to her parents to cool off. When she came back later one night, Jane saw that Lupe was parked in the drive, and Lupe had a young girl in the car with her. At that point, Jane knew that Juan had called Lupe about getting him another girl. Jane was livid and threatened to spill the beans. That’s when the two drove over to the police station to iron their differences out.
We took notes for a report and we did try to interview Juan. The police had separated the two early on. We tried to be careful in not revealing how much Jane had revealed to us, but any mention of prostitution and Juan knew immediately Jane had talked. We didn’t get anything out of Juan, he pretended not to understand us despite our getting an interpreter over the phone, but he did act very agitated. Because he was “in proceedings” we also couldn’t take him into our custody. So, we apologized to the local cops that we couldn’t take the problem off their hands and left. Jane had given us some leads to follow up on and we didn’t know who the mysterious “Lupe” character was…yet. We wanted to identify her.
We called the cops the next day to follow up on some loose ends, and they enlightened us as to what happened after we left. Generally, in situations like this, the cops require the fighting couple to go to different places to cool off. Jane’s case wasn’t much of a problem, she could go back over to her parents. However, Juan needed a ride and he couldn’t find one. After several hours, the cops thought the couple had calmed down enough and agreed that Jane could give Juan a ride home. They let them go out the door. Immediately upon release, Juan ran down the street. There was a woman walking along with her cell phone out. He grabbed the cell phone out of her hand and attempted to call somebody (Lupe?). Whoever it was, he wasn’t able to get in touch with them. He gave the woman her cell phone back, gave up and got into the car with Jane.
He wasn’t through, though. Juan punched Jane in the face as they were headed back and attempted to grab the wheel of the car. They wound up going into a ditch. An ambulance was called and Juan spent the night in the hospital courtesy of the local town’s taxes. (Each hospital has an indigent fund and illegal aliens take full advantage of that).
Great! My partner and I didn’t want to be in trouble for not picking this guy up, so, we had some writing to do. My partner contacted the Deportation Officers and gave them a full rundown on what happened. I think the local cops by that point had brought up domestic violence charges against Juan and that gave the Deportation Officers the reason they needed to haul Juan in rather than have the domestic abuser and whore monger out on the streets of small town America.
I wrote up an intelligence report on it. Fortunately, one of the other intel Agents working out of Oswego, New York had run into the mysterious Lupe before. He sent us a report saying that he thought he had run into her previously. We wound up turning our report over to ICE.
After I retired, I ran into an FBI Special Agent who had worked human trafficking cases in the local area. I asked her if she had been able to get Lupe. She said she believed ICE had managed to get her put away.
You know the crazy thing about the whole ordeal. In my researching Lupe, she may have come into the United States illegally or not (it’s been too long and I forget), but she was married to an American who appeared to be an accountant. Her husband made good money. She didn’t need to be pimping out American girls with mental problems. I always wondered if it wasn’t a bit more thrilling for her to be able to have control over another human being and the money was almost secondary to that.
20 year veteran of the U.S. Border Patrol. Author of "East into the Sunset: Memories of patrolling in the Rio Grande Valley at the turn of the century".
Master's Degree in Justice, Law and Society from American University.
Grew up partly in Europe.
