{"id":132446,"date":"2024-11-01T09:08:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-01T13:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=132446"},"modified":"2024-11-01T18:07:01","modified_gmt":"2024-11-01T22:07:01","slug":"w-post-as-smuggling-rings-made-billions-from-migrants-the-u-s-was-sidelined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=132446","title":{"rendered":"(W Post) As smuggling rings made billions from migrants, the U.S. was sidelined"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>He called himself a simple onion farmer, a Mayan Indian with four kids and a fourth-grade education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>U.S. prosecutors knew better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By his late 30s, Felipe Diego Alonzo had built a crime route stretching from Central America to Texas, allegedly paying off Mexican drug cartels along the way. He tooled around Guatemala\u2019s western highlands in a loaded silver Ford Ranger pickup. When the police finally raided his ranch, they found a study in rural narco-chic: wooden chalets, a swimming pool, a show horse valued at $100,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What they didn\u2019t find was a narco. Alonzo\u2019s business \u201cwas more profitable than drug trafficking,\u201d said one of the Guatemalan officials who detained him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alonzo was moving people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/2024\/09\/25-politics-precepts-commands-election\/\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">As smuggling rings made billions from migrants, the U.S. was sidelined <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/QKiCwSIpZx\">https:\/\/t.co\/QKiCwSIpZx<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Mary Beth Sheridan (@marybsheridan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/marybsheridan\/status\/1852326076195668018?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 1, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He called himself a simple onion farmer, a Mayan Indian with four kids and a fourth-grade education. U.S. prosecutors knew better. By his late 30s, Felipe Diego Alonzo had built a crime route stretching from Central America to Texas, allegedly<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=132446\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,627,612,149,168,144,147,114,584],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-politics","category-guatemala","category-colombia-south-america","category-economy","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-foreign-relations","category-immigration","category-law-legal-issues","category-the-u-s-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132446"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132448,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132446\/revisions\/132448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}