Woman’s jailing in Mexico highlights tourist risks

Yanira Maldonado, 42, center, accompanied by her husband, Gary, right, speaks to media after being released from a prison on the outskirts of Nogales, Mexico late Thursday, May 30, 2013. Maldonado, jailed in Mexico on a drug-smuggling charge, was released after court officials reviewed her case. She was arrested by the Mexican military last week after they found nearly 12 pounds (5.4 kilograms) of pot under her seat on the commercial bus traveling from Mexico to Arizona. AP

PHOENIX — The weeklong detention of an American woman after Mexican authorities said they found 12 pounds of marijuana under her bus seat illustrates just one of the perils Americans face while traveling south of the border.

Yanira Maldonado, 42, walked out of a prison on the outskirts of Nogales, Mexico, and into her husband’s arms late Thursday after a judge dismissed drug-smuggling charges against her.

The judge determined Maldonado was no longer a suspect after viewing video that showed the couple climbing on the bus with just a purse, blankets and bottles of water.

After returning to the Phoenix area Friday, Maldonado said, “I got strength through my faith and said, ‘I’m going to be out,’ and I got out.”

The governor of the Mexican state of Sonora, where Nogales is located, apologized for Maldonado’s ordeal during a visit to Phoenix on Friday. He said he made sure she was safe and wasn’t transferred to a federal prison and worked to ensure the court proceedings went quickly.

“In a few words I could say we’re very sorry that she was in the wrong place in the wrong moment,” Gov. Guillermo Padres Elias said. “But we’re very glad that she’s OK and she still says … that she will continue visiting our country and she will continue going on tourism trips to Sonora.

“Because Sonora really likes the United States people and Arizonans to go down there. We welcome them with open arms with a big smile and we see you as a family, so we want to continue with that.”

With kidnappings, drug cartel shootouts and other violent crime pervasive in parts of Mexico, the tourism industry has taken a hit, although popular destinations like Cancun are so well-protected that problems are rare.

Kidnappings and cartel violence are prominent among the U.S. State Department’s lengthy set of warnings about travel in Mexico. But there are also warnings about getting caught up in drug smuggling, either by being used as a “blind mule” who doesn’t know drugs have been put in their car or luggage, or by being strong-armed by smugglers who threaten harm if a person doesn’t carry drugs.

Maldonado also may have been caught up in a shakedown by Mexican police who were seeking a bribe. Her husband said police sought $5,000 to let her go.

She may have just been randomly assigned the seat under which the smugglers hid the pot. Or she could have been put there on purpose by smugglers who hoped an American was less likely to be targeted for a search and to provide cover for the real smuggler.

Alonzo Pena, who retired as deputy director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2010 and was once stationed in Mexico, said someone else on the bus probably put the drugs under Maldonado’s seat without her knowledge and watched her throughout the trip.

The State Department also warns that criminals are increasingly affixing drugs to the bottom of parked cars in Mexico, the removing them after the vehicle enters the U.S.

Those cases are rare, Pena said, because smugglers like to closely watch the drugs crossing the border.

Eric Vos, a lawyer with the U.S. Office of Defender Services who trains federal public defenders, agreed that slipping drugs into unsuspecting travelers’ cars or luggage isn’t all that common.

“There’s just like a million reasons why the blind mule thing is a difficult angle,” Vos said Friday.

It’s more common, Pena said, for drug carriers to admit they knowingly smuggled because they or their families were threatened if they disobeyed.

Another old smuggling tactic is to advertise work as security guards, housecleaners and cashiers in Mexican newspapers, telling applicants they must drive company cars to the U.S. They aren’t told the cars are loaded with drugs.

There were 39 arrests at San Diego’s two border crossings tied to the ads for seemingly legitimate jobs between February 2011 and April 2012, according to ICE, prompting the agency to take out ads in Mexican newspapers warning about the scheme.

An Arizona sheriff who has spent more than 40 years along the Mexican border said Maldonado’s case probably was a shakedown.

“They’ve got some good, courageous law enforcement officers in Mexico,” said Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada. “Coupled with that, you’ve got really corrupt ones too. And that goes at all levels.”

Estrada, whose territory includes Nogales, said finding drugs under the seat of a public bus wouldn’t have been enough to arrest her in the U.S.

“Something underneath somebody’s seat, anybody could have put it there,” he said.

But having Americans on board the bus made it easy for police to either assume the Maldonados were the smugglers, or to target them for a bribe.

The Maldonados were traveling home to the Phoenix suburb of Goodyear after attending her aunt’s funeral in the city of Los Mochis when they were arrested.

All the passengers were ordered off the bus in the town of Querobabi and a soldier searched the interior. The soldier told his superiors that packets of drugs had been found under two seats, including Yanira Maldonado’s.

Her husband, Gary Maldonado, 41, said a man sitting behind them on the bus fled during the inspection and might have been the real smuggler.

Yanira Maldonado said Friday that during the weeklong ordeal, “I got scared, I prayed.” she spent her first wedding anniversary, May 25, in jail.

Maldonado was held without bail for a week because under the Mexican judicial system, she had to prove she was innocent. The family’s lawyer in Nogales, Mexico, Jose Francisco Benitez Paz, said the video of the couple boarding the bus did just that, although prosecutors are pursuing a routine appeal.

After spending the night in a hotel on the U.S. side of the border, the Maldonados arrived home Friday afternoon to be reunited with their seven children, who range in age from 6 to 25.

Yanira Maldonado said she didn’t blame her home country but Mexican authorities should do a better job of arresting drug smugglers “and not people who are innocent like me.”

“What happened to me can happen to anyone,” she said Friday.

Since she still has family in Mexico, she said she’ll return, “not right now, maybe in the future.”

“I don’t think it’s going to happen again,” she said of her arrest, but “I’ll drive my own vehicle.”