"Three Michiganians charged with smuggling Middle Easterners to U.S."

From the AP:

Three Sterling Heights, Mich., residents have been charged with operating a smuggling ring that transported more than 200 illegal aliens from the Middle East to the United States from 2001 on.

Those charged include Detroit Assistant Ombudsman Basima Sesi.

[...those transported were Jordanians and Iraqis... they were given visas to enter an unnamed South American country... no word is given on how they came to the U.S. after arriving in that unnamed country...]

L.I. Newsday, CNN and ABC have an AP report very similar to that above. However, the latter version is rewritten and adds this:

There was no indication in the indictment that terrorism was involved in the case. The charges indicate that the defendants used the alleged smuggling ring simply to make money.

The page for the Detroit ombudsman has this soon-to-disappear blurb:

Basima Sesi, Assistant Ombudsman, received her B.S. in 1981 in Data Processing from the Detroit Institute of Technology. She previously worked for the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department as a Systems Analyst from 1982 to 1994.

Immigration_terror · Wed, 09/08/2004 - 18:02 · · Importance: 1