Smugglers Betrayed By Insiders: More To Be Sentenced In
July
Remember Christian Delgado Gomez? You might be forgiven for
missing this story in all the heat emanating from pundits after two
Pennsylvania pilots blundered too close to Pennsylvania Avenue
Wednesday, but Delgado was briefly in the news again, when he stood
in shame before US District Judge W. Royal Furgeson in a San
Antonio courtroom and listened to the judge sentence him to six
months in prison.
The 22-year-old from Nayarit, Mexico, who was in the USA to
learn to fly, wasted no time capitalizing on his newfound knowledge
and hired his skills out to a gang of immigrant smugglers, known as
"coyotes" along the border -- and in the process, became the homeland security incident of January, as
Aero-News reported at the time.
Unbeknownst to Delgado, he chose a gang that had enemies, or
perhaps competitors, and someone tipped off the authorities that
two planes of contraband would be landing in Laredo and Eagle Pass,
TX. Federal agents were already on edge because of a threat of
terrorist attack in Boston, with which the media associated this
tip-off -- both involved two men and two women from China. At
Stinson Field, TX, the authorities bagged Delgado, his rented
Cessna 172P and his contraband cargo -- the four illegal aliens
from China that he'd picked up in Eagle Pass. (Delgado's a stout
young man; it must have been cozy in that 172).
(Delgado's flight school classmates, Mexicans Stavros Quintanar,
21, and Francisco Arredondo, 22, were apparently the crew of the
Laredo plane. The authorities nabbed them in Austin with one
Mexican illegal alien, but -- jackpot! -- 108 lbs of marijuana.
All three men from this plane entered guilty pleas last month,
but will not be sentenced until July).
In February, Delgado entered a guilty plea to one charge of
transporting an illegal immigrant, and other charges were dropped.
Wednesday, according to the Express-News, he told Judge Furgerson
that his parents "gave me their support to be here, and I let them
down." Delgado's father is an airline pilot in Mexico, and was
spending $1,000 a month on his son's training and expenses
Compared to the punishments that some people are proposing for
the two ADIZ violators, even discounting John Loftus's bizarre call
for their execution, Delgado got off lightly. Along with six months
in prison --likely to be served at a minimum-security "camp" --
Delgado has to pay a $500 fine. (A search of the Federal Bureau of
Prisons website indicates that he has not yet checked in). He got
quite the discount by bargaining his plea; for each of four counts,
he could have gotten five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
That might not be the full extent of things, though. A search of
the FAA database shows that Delgado doesn't have an airman
certificate. Not any more, anyway (he reportedly had a student
ticket at the time of his arrest; and yes, we checked "Christian
Delgado Gomez" also). No word on whether he'll be able to resume
flight training -- or whether his father will still foot the bill.
For the next few months, at least, Dad's saving the money while the
taxpayers cover Junior's room and board.
The flying prospects of his fellow-students, Quintenar and
Arredondo, are bleak. FAA's current, unwritten policy, which is
supported by several parts of the regulations including 61.15 and
91.19, is that anyone convicted of using an airplane in a drug
offense faces a lifetime ban, and will never be issued an airman
certificate in the USA.
The Chinese citizens, who according to ICE agents paid smugglers
from $40,000 to $100,000 each to come to the USA, have already been
deported.