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2 face child-smuggling counts

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The Arizona Daily Star

Author: Tim Steller

Mexico holds couple from Three Points,says they tried to bring 8 kids into U.S.

Mexican officials have charged a Three Points couple with child trafficking, alleging they tried to smuggle eight children from southern Mexico into the United States.

Ramon Adrian Ruiz and Grace Compton were arrested in southern Mexico in July, said Oscar Moreno Villatoro, an official with the Mexican Attorney General's Office.

At the time, they were taking the children, ages 4 to 11, on a bus to the border at Agua Prieta, Sonora, Moreno said.

The couple said they were taking the children to Los Angeles to be reunited with their families, who were living illegally in the United States, Moreno said.

Moreno, who leads the unit that investigates kidnapping and trafficking in children, doubts their story.

"I think it was for something illicit," Moreno said. "It was not simply illegal transportation of minors."

A judge in Mexico City agreed with Moreno this week and ordered the couple held until their cases end.

The couple traveled from Tucson to the southern state of Michoac�n in early July, Moreno said. After the arrests, the children were turned over to a man who identified himself as an uncle.

Now Mexican authorities are seeking the children again, fearing that the man was not actually an uncle.

Ruiz, 29, said he is originally from Naco, Sonora, and Compton, 29, is originally from Casa Grande. They live on Howling Coyote Trail in Three Points, Moreno said.

Ruiz has a long record of arrests for traffic and criminal violations, followed by warrants for failure to appear at Pima County Justice Court.

Their cases follow the arrest in Hermosillo, Sonora, Sunday of a couple authorities suspected of trafficking in three infants they were carrying. Charges were dropped when it turned out the suspects were trying to unite the children with family members in the United States.

Another case of child trafficking across the Arizona-Mexico border came to light in 1999. Mario Reyes, of Douglas, conspired with two New York women to take as many as 23 children from Mexico to adoptive parents in New York and other states.

Reyes told the adoptive parents the children were legally processed, but he actually had them smuggled into the United States. The adoptive parents paid as much as $20,000 to Reyes and his co-conspirators, Arlene Lieberman and Arlene Reingold.

In April 2000, Reyes was sentenced to 2� years in prison and ordered to repay the adoptive parents a total of $125,000. Reingold and Lieberman were sentenced to 15 months each, and each was ordered to pay back $45,000.

Mexican authorities said they would seek Reyes' extradition to face child-trafficking charges there.

Contact Tim Steller at 434-4086 or steller@azstarnet.com

2001 Aug 18