Border Patrol steps up search
Resendez-Ramirez manhunt intensifies
By Dane Schiller
Express-News Border Bureau
LAREDO - As U.S. Border Patrol agents searched for undocumented immigrants in the train yards here Tuesday, an element of caution and fear lingered in an area considered home turf for the suspect in a string of killings.
Agents used dogs and helicopters to root out undocumented immigrants sneaking aboard freight trains headed north from this city, the busiest commercial crossing point on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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| Border Patrol agents search Laredo train yard on Tuesday in search of Resendez- Ramirez. |
But now agents, reminded by wanted posters and fugitive bulletins, are well aware that Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, an undocumented immigrant wanted in connection with eight murders near railroad tracks, could again slip past them.
"Everybody in the country who has anything to do with a railyard is keeping an eye out for him," Jack Smietana, an assistant chief for the patrol's Laredo sector, said of Resendez-Ramirez.
The man, who goes by numerous aliases including Resendez-Ramirez, is the target of an international manhunt and is wanted in connection with eight murders, including incidents near railroad tracks in Texas, Illinois and Kentucky.
Meanwhile, would-be undocumented immigrants waiting to cross the Rio Grande from nearby Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, said the elusive Resendez-Ramirez could be hiding among their ranks.
"We have to take care. He is looking for a victim every day," said Eric Garay Torres, a native of San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
"The day they catch him (Resendez-Ramirez) and take off his mask, we will see if he is the bad guy they say he is," said Garay as he sat with about a dozen other men waiting to slip into this country.
"It is very risky; there is the uncertainty of accidents and the railroad killer," he said. "He had to be a Mexican."
Meanwhile, back at a Border Patrol station here, a photo of Resendez-Ramirez hangs on a clipboard, along with a warning that he is wanted for murder.
"Ramirez is known for riding the rails," a message warns of the native of Puebla Mexico, who's on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.
"The whole world is looking for him," said Jorge Padilla, a native of Honduras, who also was waiting in Nuevo Laredo to enter the United States.
Padilla said he had seen television news reports about Resendez-Ramirez and was worried that if he sneaked aboard a train he could be attacked.
"There is fear," Padilla said.
Border Patrol agents in El Paso had Resendez-Ramirez in custody in early June, but he was released and sent back to Mexico before authorities learned he was a wanted man, confirmed Tim Counts, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service regional headquarters in Dallas.
Although there's no indication Resendez-Ramirez has prowled this border city, agents are reminded during three daily shift changes that he is on the loose.
"We go about our routine. If we encounter him, we will take action," Ramiro Garcia Jr., a patrol supervisor, said.
"There is a little more caution in the fact he is armed and dangerous," Garcia said. "He could be anywhere."
Freight cars, although dangerous, have become a favorite means of travel for undocumented immigrants trying to avoid long walks or being smuggled in vehicles, Garcia said.
"A lot of criminal aliens like the trains because they are a quicker way to get up north, and they go all over the United States," he said. "If you do not like one city, you can go somewhere else."
Covert travelers, sometimes in groups of 60 or more, hide in the brush along the edge of the railroad yard waiting for the cover of darkness to storm the trains.
In the past, immigrants have been found hiding atop wheel axles, in engine compartments or gasping for air in box cars that can turn into ovens with the summer heat.
"A lot of times they will hide under there and hold on for dear life," Garcia said as he pointed at steel beams running beneath a box car full of sports utility vehicles fresh from Mexico.
Mark Furtney, a spokesman for the Union Pacific Railroad Co., declined to comment on the hunt for Resendez-Ramirez.
"We are cooperating fully with the FBI," Furtney said from his office in San Francisco.
In 1998, about 48,558 undocumented immigrants were apprehend on Union Pacific trains throughout the United States, he said.
More than 42,000 Union Pacific train cars have headed north through Laredo since January, he said.
An FBI spokesman at the Resendez-Ramirez search command post in Houston declined to comment on new developments regarding the case or speculate on the fugitive's whereabouts.
