Human Smuggling Ring Raided

An epic bust in Arizona Thursday—after a two-year Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation, 800 federal agents and local police swept down on Phoenix, Tucson, and Nogales, arresting 47 people at five companies for smuggling more than 80,000 illegal immigrants across the border. In Mexico, police corralled additional suspects, The Arizona Republic reports. The smuggling ring allegedly had ties to Mexican drug cartels, and supposedly used shuttle-van companies to ferry undocumented migrants to and from the Arizona-Mexico border and into Phoenix, which it used as a hub. Officials said that the law enforcement operation was the biggest of its kind, and called the level of cooperation between Mexican and U.S. officials "unprecedented."