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THOMPSON SPRINGS, Grand County — A rollover early Friday that left four people dead and four people critically injured on I-70 in Grand County involved just one of many vehicles that pass through Utah every day smuggling human cargo, law enforcement officials say.
“We don’t ever want to see something like what happened today happen on our highways,” Utah Department of Public Safety Maj. Brian Redd said Friday. “We don’t want people being trafficked.”
Redd acknowledged smugglers are traveling smarter to evade detection — driving at night when fewer eyes are on the roads, and using minivans and smaller vehicles instead of large vans.
It used to be much more common for troopers to stop smugglers who were carrying 20 or even 30 people in their vehicles.
The rollover that occurred 34 miles west of the Utah-Colorado border happened at 4:30 a.m., officials said. The minivan involved carried nine occupants. One woman left the scene and has yet to be located.
Redd said smugglers enter the state through several southern routes, including I-15 and U.S. 191. Salt Lake City is a destination for smuggled families, but officials said places like Denver, Chicago, New York and Atlanta are more common destinations.
“It’s wherever the work is,” Redd said. “It’s wherever the organizations are set up to make these smuggling routes.”
Leo Lucey, chief of the investigations division at the Utah Attorney General’s Office, said individuals and families pay anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 to be smuggled into the United States.
Proyecto Latino de Utah director Tony Yapias said the rate can dip to $5,000 from Mexico.
They're at the mercy of the people bringing them into the country who are committing the crime. They are very, very vulnerable and easy to victimize in many ways.
–Leo Lucey, chief of the investigations division at the Utah Attorney General's Office
Lucey said not every smuggling case is a human trafficking case, but often smuggled families wind up in bad situations they didn’t expect and are forced into prostitution and slavery.
“They’re at the mercy of the people bringing them into the country who are committing the crime,” Lucey said. “They are very, very vulnerable and easy to victimize in many ways.”
Yapias connected human smuggling problems to the greater debate over immigration reform.
“If you had some legitimate way of coming here with a work permit, you wouldn’t have this problem,” Yapias said. “You would put all these human smuggling groups out of business.”
The smuggling business appears to have made a comeback after a dip during the recession, Redd said.
The trafficking continues, despite ongoing policing efforts.
“I think people need to understand there are people being smuggled into and through this state every day of the week, seven days a week,” Lucey said. “It’s not a hit-and-miss deal. People are being smuggled every day.”
