The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami reports that two Bahamian men have pleaded guilty to attempted alien smuggling after they were caught trying to smuggle people into Florida.
The U.S. Coast Guard picked up Rico Jerome Miller, Wardell Hall and six other passengers in April when their small boat developed engine trouble off the Florida coast. None of the people onboard had authorization to enter the United States.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office says the other passengers told investigators that they had left the Bahamas three days earlier with Miller and Hall, who were going to take them to the Miami area.
Miller and Hall each pleaded guilty Thursday to two counts of attempted alien smuggling. Sentencing is scheduled for October. Each faces a minimum of three years and maximum of 10 years in prison for each count.
People smuggling is big business in the Bahamas and the Bahamas government seems to look the other way. That might be because there are so many government officials, police officers and defence force officers enriching themselves from the trade.
One of the top players in the illegal numbers industry in The Bahamas has a thriving people smuggling business on the side. U.S. authorities have requested his extradition, but the Bahamian government refuses to send him to the U.S. to face charges because of the “generous contributions” (aka bribes) the man has made to their political campaigns.
After the United States placed The Bahamas on a human trafficking watchlist in June, the government of The Bahamas moved to stem the bad publicity by pretending to set up a “task force” on human trafficking.
There has been no meaningful acitvity from the task force and it can not be confirmed if the members of the task force ever even had a meeting. The sole purpose of the announcement was to get the U.S. off its back, stem the bad publicicty and to make the U.S. think the Bahamas government was going to get tough on traffickers.
Despite the huge number of Bahamians involved in human trafficking, there has never been a conviction against a smuggler in the history of The Bahamas.
