The Hunt for Maan Singh

  “Carlos, man, you’re not helping me find Maan Singh. Go find Margarita and talk to her. She must know something.”

  Some time passed and A. J. continued to badger Carlos.

  Finally Carlos got back to A. J.

  “Okay, Carlos, did you find Maan Singh?”

  “No, but I got to Margarita. She’s willing to talk to you.” Carlos turned over two home telephone numbers to A. J.

  On the phone with Margarita, A. J. introduced himself, “This is Andrés.”

  “Which Andrés?” Margarita was fully aware of A. J.’s true identity by now.

  He laughed and said, “I’m sorry, Margarita. I’m sorry that things happened the way they did. I don’t think you’re a bad person, you were just in a bad circumstance and, I think, Maan Singh used you.”

  “Well, I’m damned mad at Maan Singh. The whole time I was arrested and in prison, I never heard from him. He just left me out there, and they took me away from my five-year-old daughter! That son of a . . . ”

  “Margarita, that brings me to the reason I want to talk to you,” A. J. said, trying to put on the charm he had once displayed with her. “Together, let’s get him. Let’s get Maan Singh.”

  “Andrés, I don’t know. I’m afraid of what he can do to me and my daughter.”

  “Well, do you want to catch him and make him pay?”

  “Uh . . . let me think about it. Call me back in a week.”

  Instead, A. J. called her back the next day and spent an hour on the phone with her. They discussed how Singh had screwed over his own people, how some of them had died on the routes to the United States and how he never truly cared about it.

  “Andrés, mira, you have to promise to protect me and my daughter.”

  “I promise. I promise, nothing will happen to you. We’ll have plenty of security.”

  “Oh, Andrés, this time you must promise to take care of me.”

  “I’m here for you, Margarita.”

  “One last thing. You need to promise that no one will ever find out what happened to me. You know, my time in prison? The only one I ever told was my sister. I don’t want my mother, my family, to find out.”

  “You’ve got a deal.”

  That was when the hunt for Maan Singh came to life again. Here was the right hand of Maan Singh, now working for the INS.

  With Carlos Martínez and Isan Chaudry and others now working for the INS, anti-smuggling operations reached a new level. There were numerous interdictions of aliens heading for the United States on land and sea. With each operation, A. J. and Poli continued to look for Maan Singh and his relationship to the smugglers at hand. Poli was able to assign new leadership at the INS office in Ecuador and was able to place Salvador Briseño there, who turned out to be invaluable. He also selected Tim “Rico” Tubbs to serve as a special agent in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Tubbs had rendered great service in Seek and Keep. Both of them were focused on finding Maan Singh, functioning as the foot soldiers under Poli and A. J.’s direction.

  Multiple times a day, A. J. was on the phone to Margarita.

  “But, Andrés, I’ve told you, he’s not to be found in Ecuador. He may be in England or India.”

  “Okay, but do you have phone numbers?”

  “I have his son’s phone number in England, and some numbers in India for him.”

  “Well, call him.”

  Margarita was hesitant.

  “Well, if you don’t call, then give me the numbers and I will.”

  “No, no, Andrés, I’ll call him,” she promised, knowing that “Andrés” would call and spook Maan Singh.

  “Okay, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  The next day and the next and the next, A. J. called her to follow up, but there was no answer. He began to get nervous, but later on the third day, Margarita called A. J.

  “Hola,” she said flirtatiously. “¿Cómo estás?”

  “Ah, Margarita, finally.”

  “I have some good news for you,” she sang into the phone.

  “You found Maan Singh!”

  “Aren’t you going to say hello, and ask me how I am?”

  “Sure.”

  So Margarita started over: “Hola,” again flirtatiously. “¿Cómo estás?”

  So A. J. said, “Hola, querida,” and chewed the fat with her for a while.

  Finally, Margarita declared, “I found Maan Singh.”

  “Where?”

  “I can’t tell you right now.”

  “What the fuck do you mean, you can’t tell me?”

  “He’s nervous that I’m working with the Americans.”

  “No!”

  “I talked to him on the phone and we had a good conversation. I yelled at him for not contacting me, for not helping my family! He abandoned us! And I took the fall for HIM!”

  “You’re right.”

  “Andrés, mira, it was a great phone call and he wants to see me.”

  “Well . . . ”

  “I need to make arrangements with my family to take care of my daughter. I want to do it, to go to him.”

  “Wait a minute, here, Margarita. We need to make sure this is safe.”

  “Andrés, if I can survive almost being killed in a plane crash, and survive your American prisons, I can handle Maan Singh.

  “Okay, but, Margarita, please, I have to know where you’re going.”

  “I can’t tell you. It wouldn’t be safe.”

  “Okay, don’t do anything, I’ve gotta make some phone calls. I’ll call you back.”

  “Relax,” she said laughing, “calm down. It will take me a couple of days, anyway, before I can get my passport.”

  After hanging up, A. J. immediately call Poli.

  “I can’t believe you got her to help you, ’cause you screwed her over.”

  “Well, she loves me.”

  “Oh? So what’s this about two days? Why didn’t she tell you where he is now?”

  “She said that if people knew where he is, they’d screw it up like before, and this time he’ll burn her.”

  “But if she’s going to see Maan Singh, somewhere, and we don’t know where, how can we give her backup? We won’t be able to control the situation. We won’t be able to help her. . . . ”

  Poli and A. J. then had to decide to roll the dice. Did they trust her? Him? Well, Margarita was not a registered informant. Technically, she could do whatever she wanted. The two agents had to take it the way she dished it out.

  “Poli, do we tell Scott?” A. J. asked, referring to his boss.

  “No.”

  “We’re either gonna get Maan Singh, or I’m gonna get fired,” A. J. concluded.

  “And, A. J., go ahead and contact Sal Briseño in Quito and get him up to speed, just in case she needs someone from the embassy, immediately.”

  Three days later, Margarita informed A. J. that she was on her way to see Maan Singh and that she’d be gone two weeks. “I won’t be able to call you when I’m there. Maan will hear and want to know who I’m talking to.”

  “Oh?”

  “But I’ll be checking in with my sister, Yovanna. I’ll tell her about you. You can call Yovanna to relay information about my safety.”

  “Okay. Be safe, Margarita, and don’t do anything stupid. Maan Singh is not worth it.”

  The next day, Margarita left, presumably for some place in South America. And every day, twice a day, A. J. would check in with Jovanna. When there was no communication for the first two days, she had everyone worried. Finally on the fourth day, Margarita called her sister and said that everything was going well. She asked Jovanna to relay the message to A. J.

  From then on, Margarita checked in with Jovanna every other day. On the ninth day, she called A. J. directly. She confirmed that she was fine and would be back in Ecuador within a few days. A couple days later, when A. J. was checking in with Jovanna, Margarita had already arrived and picked up the phone.

  “I’m so glad you’re back, Margarita.”

  “I’m happ
y to be back home. How are you?”

  “Well, I was a little, maybe a lot, nervous for you. I’m glad you’re home safe and sound.”

  “Oh, how sweet!”

  “Okay, Margarita, where is he?”

  “He’s in Venezuela.”

  “How long has he been there?”

  “That’s where he always goes.” Just then A. J. realized that Margarita had always known where Maan Singh was. She had been playing a game to see how far she could trust A. J. It became very clear that Margarita was clever, even street smart. Ultimately, A. J. figured she’d give them Maan Singh’s location, but it would be on her terms. She wanted herself, her daughter and her sisters and brothers to be relocated to the United States. It turned out that she was a much better negotiator than Carlos Martínez ever was.

  “Margarita, I don’t have the authority to approve that.”

  “Well, when you get approval, call me back and I’ll tell you where he is.”

  What else was there to do? A. J. called Poli.

  “Damn! She’s good,” Poli said admiringly. “Anyway, it won’t be a problem. Piece of cake.”

  “Okay, good to hear.”

  “Just have Margarita get in touch with Sal Briseño. I’ll get started working on my end of the deal.”

  On the next call to Margarita, A. J. proposed the set up for her at the embassy.

  “Oh no, Andrés, I can’t trust this Briseño or anyone else. You have to take me.”

  “Margarita, you’re asking me to fly all the way to Quito just to walk you into the American Embassy?”

  “Uh-huh, yes. You owe me that much.”

  When seeking permission, A. J.’s boss approved the trip, but said it absolutely would be the last trip for Seek and Keep.

  Two days later, A. J. flew down to Quito. Sal Briseño picked him up at the airport, giving A. J. the red carpet treatment, zipping him through the airport without stopping at Customs Inspection and out to a limo. As soon as they arrived at the embassy, A. J. called Margarita from Briseño’s office.

  “Look, I will go to the embassy by myself this time, but from now on, you have to come and pick me up. That’s what a gentleman does. Oh, and don’t bring Carlos.”

  True to her word, she showed up an hour later.

  Hugs and holas, and then they went upstairs to the Immigration office of the embassy. The first thing she did was lay out all of her family’s passports on a desk. “How long is it going to take to have these ready?”

  Briseño dropped whatever he was going to do and started working on the passports immediately. While Briseño drew up “parole letters” that would allow her family to come into the United States without a visa, A. J. interviewed Margarita diligently, trying to get as much information on Maan Singh and his exact whereabouts.

  “There is no address, Andrés, no number on the house and no street name.”

  “Well, how can I find him, then?”

  “Andrés, don’t worry, I can tell you how to get there. You go down the main street and by the third dirt road, you turn right. It’s the last house. It’s blue.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I have two cell phone numbers for Maan. But be careful: Maan is paying off the people at the phone company. He knows the American feds can track people by their cell phones. So he’ll know if anyone contacts the phone company. They warn him.”

  “Okay.”

  “Andrés, let me tell you. The whole time I was there, I was extremely nervous. I kept looking around. I thought that any minute you and Poli were going to jump out of the bushes and arrest Maan.”

  “We didn’t know where you were.”

  “You didn’t know where I was? Weren’t you worried about me?” she said in her flirtatious tone.

  “Hell, yes, I was worried. I barely slept for two weeks.”

  “¡Ay, Andrés, qué lindo!”

  When Briseño had prepared all of the documents, Margarita asked for a couple of weeks to get her family packed and out of Ecuador before they went after Mann Singh.

  “Okay, but we’re gonna start working intelligence to confirm the info, and then pin Mann Singh down.”

  “Andrés, let me warn you. Do not work with the Venezuelans. Mann will find out.”

  “Okay.”

  “Please, Andrés, don’t lose him this time. If you do, you’ll never get him.”

  Margarita left the embassy for home, and A. J. and Briseño got on the horn to Poli and updated him. He’d need all the advance time possible to work through diplomatic channels to get Venezuela to expel Mann Singh as an undesirable, for a rendition in Miami.

  In early 2001, Poli had a good conversation updating Sandy Salmon, the Acting Deputy Chief of Mission in Caracas. Sandy told Poli that they had never conducted any such operation like that in Venezuela. Poli emailed her a copy of the arrest warrant for Maan Singh, and she made the contacts within the embassy and U.S. Customs to prepare for the extraction of Maan Singh. The head of customs at the embassy, Jerry Chávez, assured Poli that they had close contacts with Venezuelan authorities who would expel Maan Singh. They were needed to expel him to England via Miami.

  “Tell me where he’s at, Poli, and we’ll have them send some officers to pick him up.”

  “No way, Jerry, too risky. Plus we don’t have an exact address.”

  “Oh?”

  “But I tell you what I’ll do. I will send an INS team that has done this type of rendition before, and we’ll send the informant to pinpoint where the target is located.”

  “Poli, there’s no need. Just send the informant down to us.”

  “Can’t do that. I’ll send over one of our experienced officers who’s in Quito and can handle the rendition and see to the safety of the informant,” said Poli, thinking of sending Tim “Rico” Tubbs.

  Margarita called Maan Singh to verify he was still in the country, and informed Poli that indeed he was still there. Poli then sent Tubbs to locate him, sans Margarita. When Tubbs landed in Venezuela, much to the surprise of Poli, A. J. and Tubbs, embassy personnel informed Tubbs that the operation was off, and they sequestered him in a hotel until the next flight was available. He had been kicked out.

  Supposedly the U.S. ambassador did not want an international incident and he personally had ordered Tubbs to stand down, not leave his hotel room and to be on the next flight out of Venezuela.

  Mann Singh had avoided capture once again.

  Margarita was not happy: “You risked my life and my family’s life for nothing, una bola de pendejos!”

  “I’m not giving up. I’m still gonna get him,” A. J. swore.

  “I’ll help you. But I’m not going back to Venezuela.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to go back.”

  It was not until late in 2003, after the 9/11 attack had become a priority for all law enforcement agencies, that A. J. developed a new plan for taking down Maan Singh. But it was going to be virtually impossible to introduce an undercover agent to Maan Singh, because he was too wary. By now, Tim “Rico” Tubbs had been re-assigned to the Dominican Republic. Isan Chaudry came into play from Quito, introducing Tubbs to a low-level smuggler in Maan Singh’s network: Sunil Patel. A. J., now director of the Joint Terrorism Task Force at Homeland Security, realized that Maan Singh’s name had come up at the Human Trafficking Center of Homeland Security as a person of interest. He advised Tubbs on how to build the hunt for Maan Singh into the task force’s priorities, principally because Maan Singh did not care who the hell he smuggled into the United States that possibly could do damage to the country. Tubbs agreed and began couching his reports in that language, which served him well in obtaining cooperation from the various departments and agencies.

  In the plan, Tubbs’s identity was built up as a smuggler who could move aliens from the D. R. to the United States. The plan’s implementation took a great deal of time. It involved developing trust and firmly establishing Tubbs as a human trafficker, a barrier that was only overcome by getting Sunil to interven
e with Maan Singh. But Singh would never talk to a white guy again, not after being almost burned through Seek and Keep. So Sunil, from his business front in Curacao, would call Singh with Tubbs on the line, but with strict instructions for Tubbs not to utter a word. It didn’t matter, because Sunil spoke the whole time in Punjabi, which was completely foreign to Tubbs; however, he was able to record the three-way call. In the meantime, U.S. intelligence had been monitoring Maan Singh’s phone, and Sunil was heard promoting Tubbs to Singh.

  Maan Singh was heard replying, “We’re not going to use any direct routes into the United States. They’ve tried that on me before, and I’m not going to fall for it again.”

  Ramesh Patel, a high-level smuggler for Singh, eventually met with Tubbs in Curacao. Because Tubbs already knew that they would not trust a white man, he flipped it on Patel.

  “Mr. Patel, any further dealings we have, you’ll have to deal with my associate, Mr. Isan Chaudry.”

  Subsequently, Tubbs flew Isan in and introduced him to Ramesh. They set up a new route into the United States: Curacao to Haiti to the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico and from there to anywhere in the continental United States. They would go to Haiti first because there was no visa requirement.

  After seemingly hundreds of phone conversations, finally the Patels began to trust Tubbs and implement the smuggling route they had set up. Despite all of Maan Sing’s caution, in February of 2004 Tubbs began smuggling their aliens two-at-time on commercial airlines. After three loads, totaling six clients, with a terminus in New York City, in February, March and May, Tubbs had gotten close enough to these passengers to find out practically all they knew about the hawala, the routes they’d taken and Maan Singh’s oversight of the operations. Tubbs, who had been the original INS agent receiving the aliens in Miami under Seek and Keep, was completely familiar with the procedures as to implement A. J.’s plan for the whole route. Based on Tubbs’ success with these initial six, Singh authorized eight additional passengers, but this time Ramesh Patel was able to get the passengers genuine Dominican Republic resident cards, and thus avoid having to traverse through Haiti. As planned, the eight passengers arrived and were placed in a stash house in Santo Domingo. However, things began to go south when Tubbs, by protocol, informed the Dominican police that someone was issuing these authentic resident cards. Tubbs and Patel were forced to keep the aliens in the stash house longer than expected. Because of the delay, the extremely wary Maan Singh began to get nervous. As a reflex, Singh hired two Pakistani nationals to kidnap the aliens from the stash house; and they smuggled the aliens themselves on direct flight from Santo Domingo to Canada, thus quashing A. J.’s otherwise well-planned operation.