The food court of a shopping center in northern Barranquilla was the ‘office’ used by Alfonso Javier Monterrosa Cabarcasthe man who, along with three other people, was captured in a recent operation carried out by the Dijín of the National Police in the capital of the Atlantic and which took place in the context of, at least, two years of investigation against him.
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The operation was designed to hit and dismantle this group of people dedicated to processing visas to enter the United States. Most of the clientele was inside Barranquilla, Sabanalarga and Manati.
For the authority, Monterrosa, with a history of preparing false documents and an expert in legal proceedings, was a key player in the network dedicated to issuing tourist and humanitarian visas to enter the United States, but with false information.
An investigator on the case, whose identity we have withheld for security reasons, pointed out that this individual and his accomplices, all today behind bars for aggravated migrant smuggling and aggravated conspiracy to commit a crime, would have processed approximately 1,500 visas on Atlantic territory for people who wanted to find the so-called American dream.
The other detainees were identified by the armed institution as Griselda Ramirez, Michael Ospina and Octavio Reina.
“Voice to voice was used to get in touch with these people who knew what they were doing, but for the Public Prosecution Service they are victims. In other words, a person who obtained a visa through the DS-160 form -tourist visa- recommended the services of Monterrosa and at the same time asked for promotion,” said the official in charge of the investigation.
The clients used to be in the city of Barranquilla and in the cities of Sabanalarga and Manatí, the latter two apparently having a large number of travelers to North American territory, for which Monterrosa Cabarcas had included false information on the forms to obtain the profiles of the applicators.
“We showed that many of these customers were from those two populations, because the profile created by the researcher was that of landowners, dedicated to livestock and permanent travelers abroad. Example: I created a profile of a farmer for a client who owned a farm and whose dairy product generated monthly dividends of 18 million pesos. Besides you fake diplomas obtained from lawyers, administrators and engineers and in addition, he put stamps on the passports to enter and leave countries, all to mislead the embassy employee, ”explained Dijín’s detective.
The zeal to achieve the document cost between 8 and 10 million pesos, according to the researcher. But this could have added value if the visa arrangement requested by the client was express. The latter in connection with the fact that, as is known, the Embassy of the United States is today postponing appointments for interviews to apply for the document for entry into the country in one or two years.
In this sense, the detective pointed out that the suspects charged “extra money” for the so-called emergency appointments, which are requests for permission to enter the country to visit a sick person or something that requires an urgent matter, “such as your name it says. They even received handicaps from hospitals there (UNITED STATES)”.
Source: El heraldo
John Cameron is a journalist at The Nation View specializing in world news and current events, particularly in international politics and diplomacy. With expertise in international relations, he covers a range of topics including conflicts, politics and economic trends.
