Copyright 2001 Phoenix Newspapers, Inc. Reprinted with permission by The Arizona Republic.

In the wee hours of an August day two years ago, nine Mexican immigrants were delivered to a south Phoenix drop house. They thought it was the first stop on a journey to jobs in Washington state.

Instead, they were kidnapped and caught in a parking-lot shootout. The Phoenix firefight left three men dead and came to be known as "The OK Corral Case."

This week, the last of the five kidnappers will be sentenced. The other four have drawn life sentences without the possibility of parole.

The case dramatizes the dangers that come with Phoenix's booming smuggling trade and the soaring number of drop houses shielding illicit activities across the Valley.

Weary from their illegal border crossing near Douglas, the nine migrants had settled in at the south Phoenix house only to be rousted by a group of armed kidnappers who were themselves illegal immigrants. The kidnappers took the frightened pollos to a motel on West Van Buren Street. There, the hostages were threatened and ordered to turn over the names of relatives whom the kidnappers could call to demand a ransom.

Negotiations led the kidnappers to a Pep Boys parking lot at 24th Street and McDowell Road, where they were to meet the group's smugglers and swap three of the hostages for $100 apiece.

That's when the shooting started. A kidnapper and a smuggler were killed. Slain in the crossfire was a 15-year-old boy who was one of the immigrants headed north.

A written synopsis of the case by the Immigration and naturalization Service makes clear that the events leading up to the shootout were not unusual for the Valley.

"In the last decade, Phoenix has been the hub of alien smuggling," it says. "This means that Phoenix is the staging point for most of the illegal alien-smuggling traffic in the U.S."

In the aftermath of the case, federal immigration authorities have redoubled their anti-smuggling efforts locally and are asking judges for stiffer penalties against smugglers of humans.

"This type of crime is becoming more and more prevalent in Phoenix," assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Smith told U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver last week during a hearing in the case.

On Wednesday, Carlos Garcia-Mesa, 35, will be sentenced in federal court. He is the last of five Mexican men convicted of federal kidnapping and smuggling charges. Last month, Alberto Torres-Mendoza, 25; Alejandro Torres-Espinoza, 37; Andres Espinoza- Torres, 21; and Ricardo Torres-Espinoza, 31, were handed life sentences plus 235 years for their roles in the shootout.

First Assistant U.S. attorney Michael Johns said the convictions and harsh sentences should send a signal to smugglers, who have increasingly resorted to violence and kidnapping as the price escalates for moving illegal immigrants across the Mexican border to cities throughout the United States.

"Seldom a week goes by ... that these agents don't get notice of a hostage case in progress," said Russell Ahr, special assistant to the district director of the INS.

The OK Corral Case was particularly notable because the shootout occurred in daylight and served notice to law-enforcement officials that smuggling-related activities in Arizona were creating a threat to public safety.

Last Friday, one of the smugglers in the case, Lorenzo Heredia-Bojorquez, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in a federal prison for harboring the immigrants. He was not involved in the shootout. Testimony at Heredia's hearing described an entrenched smuggling system throughout metro Phoenix.

According to testimony, smugglers can earn $200 or more per illegal immigrant to drive them from the Mexican border to safe houses in Phoenix. Those who house the immigrants, usually for no more than a night, earn from $10 to $40 per head. They also get extra cash from smugglers to feed their charges until a third person arrives to move the immigrants to the next destination by car, bus, or airplane.

In the OK Corral Case, one of the men involved in the shootout had driven to Phoenix from Washington state to pick up the immigrants, three of whom were his cousins.

"Pollos, or the smuggled undocumented aliens, are housed at Phoenix drop houses until their family or friends pay their smuggling fees," the INS report said. "In the case of a Mexican, it could reach as high as $1,500,
(for) Central Americans, $4,000, and much higher for citizens of other countries."

With the increase in border crossings through Arizona, the INS said some smugglers are even opting out of the drug trade and moving people because it is a profitable enterprise that does not normally carry penalties as harsh as narcotics smuggling.

"These large amounts of alien-smuggling cash being generated in Phoenix have now given birth to a new breed of criminals, the pollo rip-off crews," the INS report says. "Like the dope rip-off crews, they are well armed and well connected to the smugglers' intelligence system. This has led the smugglers to better arm themselves."

The OK Corral Case took months to assemble, with more than 250 witnesses interviewed by INS agents and Phoenix police. Though the kidnappers initially accepted plea agreements, all backed out at the last minute, turning their backs on proposed prison terms that would not have gone beyond 25 years.

Their convictions and life sentences came after a two-month trial that ended in March.