Arizona serves as the geographic funnel through which a large portion of the illegal entrants to our country travel. The Arizona Attorney General is committed to disrupting the criminal activities of human smugglers, known as coyotes, by attacking the financial underpinnings of these organizations. Through extensive investigations, the Attorney General has learned that the human smuggling trade depends in large part upon the services of money transmitters, like Western Union. Payments to coyotes are very often made by the family and friends of the undocumented persons being smuggled into and across the United States. Payments in the millions of dollars are wired through money transmitters from cities in the Midwest and the East to locations in Arizona and Mexico to pay for coyote services. The Attorney General’s Office has devised a program to disrupt the normal business of the coyote organizations by seizing and forfeiting the payments being made for the coyotes’ services.

If wire transmittals of money meet certain criteria that have been reviewed and approved by Judges of the Maricopa County Superior Court, those transmittals are stopped. The intended recipient is then instructed to contact law enforcement agents from the City of Phoenix, the Department of Public Safety and the Attorney General’s Office. If the purposes for which the money was sent are shown to law enforcement to be legitimate, the money is immediately released. However, if the investigators determine that the transmittal is illegitimate, the money is seized. The money is then forfeited after compliance with a legally authorized court procedure.

Over $17 million has been taken from coyote organizations through this innovative approach to stopping the human smuggling trade. By taking the profit out of human smuggling, the Attorney General is striking back at those criminals who make it possible for undocumented persons to travel within the United States.