Previously Deported Kidnapper Caught Sneaking into Arizona

Federal agents arrested a previously-deported convicted kidnapper after he illegally snuck into Arizona.

U.S. Border Patrol agents near Douglas recently arrested a man and a woman from Mexico who agents spotted shortly after the couple entered the country illegally. The agents took the individuals to a station where they went through a routine booking process. During that process, authorities learned that the man was 29-year-old Victorino Rosado Morales, a convicted kidnapper who a court convicted of helding illegal immigrants for ransom. Immigration officials deported the man earlier this year after he obtained an early release. 

Information provided to Breitbart Texas by law enforcement officials revealed that police arrested Rosado-Morales in 2008 for a kidnapping in South Phoenix. He and two other gunmen held ten illegal immigrants for ransom. The investigation and subsequent arrest were carried out by a special kidnapping task force that had been executing search warrants at suspected stash houses used by cartel-connected gangs. 

Initially, Rosado-Morales and his co-conspirators were each charged with ten counts of kidnapping, one count of misconduct involving a weapon, nine counts of extortion, and four counts of human smuggling. Months later, Rosado-Morales pleaded guilty in state court, to one count of kidnapping and received a ten-year prison sentence. 

For unknown reasons, Rosado-Morales was released approximately 18 months before he completed his sentence; court documents revealed that he was originally set to be released in July 2018. Federal authorities deported him to Mexico in February but Rosado Morales managed to return to Arizona last week.  

In 2008, at the time that Rosado was operating his kidnapping group in Arizona, the city of Phoenix experienced an epidemic of kidnappings related to human smuggling and drug trafficking. The ransom kidnapping crisis led to Phoenix being referred to as the “Kidnapping Capital,” the LA Times reported. The large majority of those cases involved victims and suspects illegally in the United States, primarily from Mexico. Some also came from Central America. In response to the kidnapping crisis, law enforcement officials were forced to create specialized kidnapping units.

Robert Arce is a retired Phoenix Police detective with extensive experience working Mexican organized crime and street gangs. Arce has worked in the Balkans, Iraq, Haiti, and recently completed a three-year assignment in Monterrey, Mexico, working out of the Consulate for the United States Department of State, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Program, where he was the Regional Program Manager for Northeast Mexico (Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Durango, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas.)