Gaming The System: The U.S. keeps erecting immigration barriers. Rich elites can maneuver around them.
by MeganMoulos
How Latin America’s rich and corrupt circumvent the immigration roadblocks President Trump has built
Editor’s Note: This report, the first of four to be published in palabra., is the result of a fellowship funded by the Fund for Investigative Journalism in partnership with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and el Nuevo Herald of Miami.
This story first appeared in the Miami Herald.
The Spanish version, Jugando Con El Sistema, can be found it its entirety at el Nuevo Herald.
This report has been updated to include a response from Jose Sanchez Berzain.
President Donald Trump won the White House — and is trying to do it again — in large part by railing against “sanctuary cities,” refugees and other immigrants.
His “great, great wall,” funded by taxpayers, not Mexico, is progressing slowly though recently sullied by a scandal involving his former campaign chief, Steve Bannon. He has sharply increased fees for asylum seekers and green-card applicants and torn apart families at the border. If his predecessor, Barack Obama, earned the nickname “deporter in chief,” Trump has carried antipathy toward immigrants to uncharted heights.
But as it has over many years and administrations, one group continues to mostly slip through the cracks: Latin American elites, including a who’s who of Miami-based high-ranking government officials and business tycoons, stay a step ahead of legal authorities. They are able to leverage their fortunes and connections to secure visas, green cards and asylum.
Play the Game
Have you ever wondered how the immigration system works for different people? Take your shot and play the game.
(Although President Trump halted most forms of legal immigration in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, in September Congress voted to extend funding for the controversial EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Program through December.)
An investigation by the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald, in conjunction with Mexico’s Aristegui Noticias and a group of independent journalists in Colombia, documents how rich foreign nationals from Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico and Venezuela, guided by a network of lawyers, real estate agents and bankers, have managed to stiff-arm U.S. immigration authorities and build up their financial portfolios while thwarting prosecutors back home.
Manuel Baldizon - Photo Courtesy of eNH
Friends in high places
Manuel Antonio Baldizón Méndez, 50, is a textbook kleptocrat.
In early 2015, the former Guatemalan senator was on a glide path to the presidency — despite rumors that drug clans had funded his rise.
Confident of victory, he traveled to the United States in February of that year for a pre-election tour. The reception included a meeting with Mike Pence, then governor of Indiana but soon to be tagged as Donald Trump’s running mate. Baldizón’s son Jorge was an intern for Pence.
The vice president’s office did not return the Herald’s request for comment.
Back home, events took a dark turn for Baldizón. A United Nations-backed anti-impunity commission was in the process of uncovering dozens of schemes by political leaders to siphon cash from the public treasury, ending in the resignation and arrest of the president, cabinet members and dozens of other politicians and elites.
Among those implicated, just three months before the September primary, was Baldizón’s running mate, Edgar Barquín, later convicted of illicit association and influence trafficking in a scheme of more than $100 million.
Baldizón lost the September 2015 election. A path out of Guatemala awaited. It ran through Miami, where he had spent a good deal of time.
Starting in 2011, he had accumulated a string of properties in South Florida. His links to those purchases are obscured in a tangle of limited liability corporations, but documents obtained by the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald connect the dots. Clearwater International Management LLC https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_fl/L16000115807 and I-95 Inn LLC are Florida corporations at the end of a chain of title transfers between anonymous shell companies, including B&V Diversified Management LLC and Invest and Business LLC. Both of those companies were registered in Delaware, which allows corporate officers to obscure their identities. I-95 Inn and Clearwater, the Florida firms, are registered to a different Manuel Baldizón, his 27-year-old son. name--if we add all last names here this would read clunky.
Despite his political crash-and-burn at home, Baldizón remained an A-lister in U.S. Republican circles. His personal Facebook page displays photos of Baldizón at a Trump-Pence inaugural ball in January 2017, where he hung out with Pence and the VP’s brothers.
Escape route
Miami has always been eyed as a second home for the hemisphere’s ruling class and other elites, many of whom maintain or maintained properties in Florida. It is often the first stop when they flee their homelands. In 1959, Fulgencio Batista arrived in Miami after his exile from Cuba, later ending up in the Dominican Republic. Forced to flee in the face of the Sandinista rebellion in 1979, Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza sought entry upon arrival in Miami, only to be denied refuge by President Jimmy Carter despite Somoza’s longtime ties to the community. He was assassinated a year later in Paraguay.
The explosion in high-end real estate over the past decade has cemented hemispheric bonds.
Occasionally someone is snagged in the gears of law enforcement. Former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, who resided in an $8 million waterfront home in Coral Gables, was extradited back to Panama in 2018 — only to be acquitted of corruption and espionage.
“Inadmissible immigrants” include those who have engaged in terrorism, drug or human trafficking, genocide, or money laundering. But loopholes are plentiful. Exclusions can be waived if a secretary of state believes that enforcing the rules would have adverse foreign policy consequences.
Influence and money — especially to hire an in-the-know attorney — can overcome the rules that crush the hopes of everyday immigrants. A review of more than 1.2 million cases obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests to the Executive Office for Immigration Review revealed that 90 percent of asylum applicants without an attorney were denied asylum while almost half of those with legal representation were successful.
On its public website, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) boasts about its efficiency at arresting and deporting ever-increasing numbers of immigrants, especially those with police records. Under Trump, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has created an office charged with stripping the citizenship of naturalized citizens suspected of committing fraud by hiding blemishes in their applications.
While these initiatives are boldly publicized, the government has been circumspect about its handling of wealthy, politically connected expatriates.
In January, the Herald filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the State Department seeking information on the visas issued to 24 individuals linked to South Florida.
Citing “unusual circumstances,” the government has yet to provide a single document.
That same month, the Herald filed a records request with DHS, which oversees ICE, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), for records on those same influential figures. The government repeatedly refused to comply, citing the Privacy Act of 1974, which regulates the collection, maintenance and dissemination of personal records held by federal agencies.
In his first week in office, President Trump stripped non-U.S. citizens and non-permanent residents of those privacy protections. The Herald brought that directive to the attention of DHS, which has ignored it.
Erick Estuardo Archila Dehesa - Photo Courtesy of eNH
From the 40th floor
Erick Archila Dehesa, the former Guatemalan minister of mines and energy, has been wanted in his homeland since 2016. Prosecutors charged him in connection with a scheme to ask for “contributions” from the private sector to purchase gifts for the president and vice president, including a powerboat, an armored Jaguar, a Harley and several off-road vehicles.
By the time the arrests began, Archila was safely situated in Miami.
Juan Murillo, partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP in Washington, D.C., told the Miami Herald he defended Archila. He said he succeeded in having the Interpol “red notice” — a request to detain by the international police agency — against Archila removed, and in derailing the extradition proceedings initiated by the Guatemalan government.
Archila, 51, is married to a U.S. citizen and continues to live comfortably. A 40th-floor unit at the Mint Condominium in downtown Miami is one of his mailing addresses, valued at over $1.1 million. The property is registered not to Archila, but to Mint 4003 Corp., a company formed in the British Virgin Islands, listed by Business Insider magazine as the world’s top tax haven.
His investments are tied to another LLC, Canal A Media Holding. That echoes the name of a cable channel Archila owns in Guatemala as part of Grupo A, one of the biggest media conglomerates in the Central American nation.
According to public filings dated Oct. 17, 2016, Archila procured the services of two top attorneys, Jed and Marvin Kurzban, partners in the prestigious Coral Gables firm Kurzban Kurzban Tetzeli and Pratt, P.A., to form the LLC in Florida.
Another name partner at the same firm, Ira Kurzban, represented Archila in his immigration proceedings. Documents examined by the Herald show Archila is in the process of obtaining an L-1 visa, which is used by companies to transfer foreign executives to the United States. He also has a pending asylum petition, records show.
Since 2019, Canal A Media also appears to have been registered by Corporation Company of Miami, which belongs to Shutts & Bowen LLP, one of the oldest white-shoe firms in South Florida, whose founder Frank B. Shutts came to Miami to become Henry Flagler’s legal representative.
Neither firm returned the Herald’s requests for comment about Archila’s business dealings in South Florida.
In a statement, a spokesman for Grupo A said the media company has “a long trajectory of journalistic objectivity” and has “partnerships with American media companies like CNN en Español.”
A spokesperson for CNN en Español said Grupo A is one of dozens of companies with which it does business in Latin America but offered no further comment.
Gustavo Salazar Delgado - Photo Courtesy of eNH
Father and son
Carlos Polit Faggoni, 70, had served in many government posts in Ecuador, becoming controller once again in 2017. That same year, he was accused of taking $10.1 million in bribes from the scandal-plagued Brazilian-based construction giant Odebrecht S.A. He relocated to Miami, where he has had dual U.S.-Ecuadorian citizenship.
Odebrecht was an international scandal. The construction giant paid more than $780 million in bribes across 10 countries in Latin America to many in the high echelons of government and business in return for favorable bid considerations.
Ecuador tried him in absentia and he was sentenced in June 2018. His 39-year-old son, John, a U.S. citizen born in South Florida, was charged in Ecuador with being an accomplice and also convicted at that time. But he, too, was out of reach in Miami.
Carlos Polit has been permitted to stay even as the State Department has canceled more than 300 visas issued to other Ecuadorian citizens who are facing corruption allegations. The tally was provided by Michael Fitzpatrick, the U.S. ambassador to Ecuador.
Together, the Polits have prospered, purchasing at least three properties for almost $7 million. All are in the names of LLCs. There are legitimate reasons to use LLCs, but they can also be used to hide money from questionable sources.
Polit properties include a house in Pinecrest purchased in June 2018 and an exclusive condo at Aria on the Bay in Edgewater, bought in August 2018, both valued at more than $2.2 million, according to property records. Such acquisitions, made with cash, at least initially, by foreign buyers employing shell companies, have been a regular feature in South Florida, where a large chunk of real estate sales has involved foreign buyers using anonymous shell companies.
Concerned about dirty money being laundered through real estate, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has sought to strip away the mask of anonymity from real estate purchases in South Florida and a handful of other markets. Four years ago, it required that title insurance companies identify and report the individuals behind shell companies used in all-cash purchases of residential real estate costing $1 million or above. Later it lowered the threshold to $300,000.
Both of the Polits have lingering legal issues. Carlos Polit faces an extradition request by Ecuador, said Juan Carlos Sanchez, deputy mission chief at Ecuador’s embassy in Washington.
This past June, the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into the younger Polit, a former Merrill Lynch employee, to determine if his association with a broker and investment advisor registered with the SEC coincided with any alleged illegal behavior in Ecuador.
The Polits are represented by Fernando Tamayo, with the law firm Coffey Burlington. According to Tamayo, under Ecuadorian law the Polits’ convictions are not final until they have exhausted the appeals process. He said the properties were all purchased with legitimate funds.
“With regards to the SEC proceedings relating to John, we are confident that his wrongful conviction in Ecuador will soon be overturned on appeal, which would result in a favorable resolution of the SEC matter,” Tamayo said.
By Megan Moulos
Odebrecht’s Peruvian play
In June 2017, when Peruvian insurance millionaire Gustavo Salazar was accused of facilitating and laundering a bribe to a governor in exchange for a highway project that is over budget by $100 million, he went on TV to deny it — from Miami.
As with much of the hemisphere’s alleged corruption, the money in question originated with Odebrecht.
A Peruvian judge ordered him extradited the following year.
Salazar, 54, a legal permanent resident married to an American citizen, has stayed put. An online video shows him dancing at his daughter’s lavish December wedding in Miami.
“Being in the United States allows Gustavo Salazar to defend himself against these politically motivated and unproven allegations without the risk of sitting in a Peruvian jail during the phase of investigation,” his attorney, Lilly Ann Sánchez, told the Herald.
Arantxa Salazar, in her mid-20s, is not only Salazar’s newlywed daughter, but president of eight LLCs. She was able to secure a loan for one of the LLCs, Lulu 3103, with M & M Private Lending Group. The company’s website promises “hard money” loans — generally high-interest loans, often for short periods of time, that don’t require tax returns, credit checks or bank statements.
Since 2012, the LLCs have jointly owned a $1.5 million apartment at the Jade Signature in Sunny Isles Beach, where Gustavo Salazar apparently lives.
When asked about the transfer of assets to Gustavo Salazar’s daughter, Sánchez said “individuals are being left without any access to the banking or financial systems, thus leaving them with no choice but to transfer assets and depend on family members for any of their banking needs.”
Peru awaits a decision on its extradition request.
Jose Carlos Sanchez Berzain - Photo Courtesy of eNH
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada - Photo Courtesy of eNH
Above the fray
For 17 years, former Bolivian President Gonzalo “Goni” Sánchez de Lozada and his defense minister, José Carlos Sánchez Berzain, have faced accusations that they authorized the military to use deadly force against civilians, a majority of them indigenous Aymara. Sixty-seven people were killed and hundreds injured in October 2003, according to news reports, although Sánchez Berzain has disputed the number and whether he directed the military’s actions.
The pro-American Sánchez de Lozada resigned and left for the United States around the same time as Sánchez Berzain, aided by the U.S. State Department, documents show. They have lived in Maryland and South Florida, respectively, since 2003.
Sánchez Berzain filed for asylum in 2006, stating he would be tortured by henchmen of then-President Evo Morales.
His request was approved in May 2007. Later that year, Bolivia’s Supreme Court allowed the country’s attorney general to formally indict Sánchez de Lozada and Sánchez Berzain on multiple charges, including genocide, and petition for their extradition.
The extradition request was denied in 2012. A new one was filed in 2014. By then, Sánchez Berzain was on his way to obtaining legal permanent residency.
Sánchez Berzain and Sánchez de Lozada have prospered in their new country. Together with his brother-in-law, Sánchez Berzain is associated with several LLCs through which various properties have been purchased. He has also carved a niche as an anti-Communist crusader among exiled Cubans and Venezuelans, opening a political center called the Interamerican Institute for Democracy and has regularly written op-eds that inveigh against 21st Century socialism, which he calls “Castrochavism.”
He has faced legal headwinds since Harvard Law’s International Human Rights Clinic filed a civil complaint under the 1992 Torture Victims Protection Act that permits civil suits in the United States against individuals who, acting in an official capacity for any foreign nation, committed torture and/or extrajudicial killings.
The litigation, filed in 2007, has meandered through the courts. In April 2018, a jury in federal court in Fort Lauderdale rendered a split verdict against the pair, finding that the killings were extrajudicial and that Sánchez Berzain and Sánchez de Lozada bore responsibility under the “command responsibility doctrine.” At the same time, it ruled that the killings were not “willful” on the part of soldiers. The plaintiffs were awarded $10 million in damages.
Last November, a judge tossed out the verdict. In August, an appeals court invalidated that action, upholding the original ruling.
Under the Trump administration, the civil court case is enough to flag Sánchez Berzain for removal.
Then-Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly signed a memo in February 2017 directing department personnel to prioritize the removal of those who “have been charged with any criminal offense that has not been resolved; and have committed acts which constitute a chargeable criminal offense.”
In addition, hearsay evidence has been admissible in deportation proceedings under U.S. case law since 1988. Legal experts say this has been applied to the cases of hundreds if not thousands of immigrants.
Sánchez Berzain, a fixture in Florida, remains.
Neither Sánchez Berzain nor his attorneys of record, Ana C. Reyes from Washington, D.C.-based Williams & Connolly LLP and Evan B. Berger from Becker & Poliakoff, P.A., returned the Herald’s multiple requests for comment.
After this article appeared online, Sánchez Berzain contacted the Miami Herald and said, in part: “I invite you to carry out a complete investigation on my assets, economic activities and income so that you can verify the extraordinary damage that I have suffered and suffer as a result of exile and persecution by Evo Morales, his regime and his partners or bosses transnational companies that operate from Cuba and Venezuela.”
Genaro Garcia Luna - Photo Courtesy of ENH
Golden years
Genaro García Luna, 51, was a big man in Mexico who later lived large in one of South Florida’s tiniest, wealthiest towns: Golden Beach. From 2001 to 2005, he headed Mexico’s Federal Investigation Agency, later serving as secretary of public security, overseeing the country’s national police force.
García Luna was President Felipe Calderón’s right-hand man from 2006-2012 as Calderón steered the country’s drug war, a conflict that left 120,000 dead and 16,400 missing.
The United States spent $1.5 billion supporting Calderón and working closely with García Luna, who relocated to South Florida after ending his term.
Mexico is accustomed to seeing public servants transition to opulent retirements, and García Luna fit the pattern. He acquired a $3.3 million home in tiny Golden Beach that featured a private dock, convenient for mooring his $700,000 yacht.
Documents reviewed by the Herald show he was an officer of three LLCs, one of which was used to purchase a commercial property in Aventura. He also managed to become a legal permanent resident.
Then, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug kingpin known as “El Chapo,” was arrested, extradited to the United States and convicted in 2019. During the U.S. trial, a cartel member’s testimony zeroed in on García Luna. The witness described delivering at least $6 million, stuffed in suitcases, to García Luna in exchange for safe passage and law enforcement intel.
García Luna was arrested last December.
In addition to the drug charges, he was accused of making false statements on his citizenship application by denying he was ever involved in a crime.
García Luna awaits trial in a New York jail, an example of the Justice Department pursuing an influential foreign national. His attorney, César de Castro, declined to comment.
Pointing the finger
When the law or immigration authorities close in, kleptocrats can resort to a tried-and-true method: snitching on others.
Prosecutors accused Guatemala’s Guillermo Lozano Bauer, the former presidential pilot and head of the country’s port authority, of being handpicked by then-President Otto Pérez Molina to coordinate a series of kickbacks. Lozano testified against the Cachiros cartel, one of Honduras’ largest trafficking rings with a net worth close to $1 billion, according to witness testimony examined by the Miami Herald. Lozano has resided undisturbed since 2013 in a property he purchased in Sunny Isles Beach. Lozano’s attorney, William “Bill” Clay II, did not return the Herald’s requests for comment. if you want emphasis, then leave it both places.. shows we tried in both cases to get comment.....mary
Alejandro Lyons Muskus-Photo Courtesy of eNH
Colombia’s Alejandro Lyons Muskus thought testifying against others would be his route out of trouble. The former senator was recruited as a confidential source by federal agents in 2017 in Miami, where he had been living since his links to a series of embezzlement schemes were discovered. One involved purchasing a hemophilia medicine and billing for fake patients. Lyons played a key role in the arrest of a former Colombian anti-corruption chief, who pleadedguilty to a money-laundering conspiracy charge for taking a bribe from Lyons at the Dolphin Mall in Sweetwater.
That’s when things got interesting. Like countless others who become confidential informants for the government, he could have built a new life in Miami or relocated with a new identity. Then, according to Colombian sources, Lyons was caught lying to DEA agents. Last August, Lyons was arrested, and he was slated for deportation, a cautionary tale about making a deal and failing to live up to the bargain.
However, before he could be deported, he was released.
For months, the Miami Herald searched for Lyons’ whereabouts and assets, finding only inactive LLCs, including one company registered to a purported girlfriend. His estranged wife and his three children have returned to Colombia. DHS declined to comment.
The limits of impunity
Becoming an informant was the path ultimately chosen by Manuel Baldizón, the Guatemalan who nearly became president. He needed to do something when his links to the drug trade — and Odebrecht corruption — finally caught up with him.
In January 2018, Guatemalan prosecutors would allege that $17.9 million had gone to various presidential candidates — with some of it ending up in Baldizón’s pockets. His reported share: $3 million. But when raids were carried out, Baldizón was nowhere to be found.
On Jan. 2, 2018, Baldizón arrived at Miami International Airport on a flight from the Dominican Republic. It was a trip he’d made many times before. This time he was arrested on an Interpol warrant.
Authorities from both the United States and Guatemala said Baldizón would soon return to face corruption charges back home. Instead he filed for U.S. political asylum.
While waiting to appear before an immigration judge, Baldizón was approached by DEA and FBI agents looking into drug cartel-linked money laundering. The former candidate agreed to a plea deal, which included a reduced 50-month sentence and helped bring down another money launderer last year. One of his Miami apartments was confiscated, but other properties remain under the control of his son.
For months, Baldizón’s attorney succeeded in moving back his Bureau of Prisons reporting date, citing his client’s health issues.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida declined to comment. Baldizón’s attorney — who also represents Lozano — Bill William “Bill” Clay II did not return the Herald’s multiple emails.
As the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration continues, roughly 50,000 undocumented immigrants are confined in jails, prisons, tents and other forms of detention by ICE.
As for South Florida kleptocrats, two are currently in custody: García Luna and Baldizón, who surrendered to a federal prison in McRae-Helena, Georgia, on Sept. 1.
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This story was edited by Casey Frank of the Miami Herald and Nancy San Martín, Douglas Rojas-Sosa and Jay Ducassi of el Nuevo Herald.
Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald reporters Kevin G. Hall, Jay Weaver and Antonio Maria Delgado contributed to this story. Fabio Posada reported from Cali, Colombia. Marcos Martínez Chacón of Aristegui Noticias reported from Mexico City.
Illustrations by: Megan Moulos
Lead Design: Eduardo Álvarez, McClatchy; Sarah Blaskey, Albert Franquiz, Miami Herald; and Nathaniel Levine from the Sacramento Bee
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Romina Ruiz-Goiriena is a multimedia journalist and producer. She covers politics and immigration issues and has worked in Paris, Cuba, and Israel for France24, El Mundo, and Haaretz. In 2016 she co-founded Barrio, a digital news outlet that sought to make political news more accessible to Latinos. Previously, she worked in Guatemala and Central America for CNN and The Associated Press.