16 Camp Pendleton Marines Arrested In Migrant Smuggling Investigation

Speaker 1: 00:00 More than a dozen marines were arrested at Camp Pendleton. Thursday in connection with the smuggling ring linked to a federal case involving two other marines and a platoon of San Diego. Seals was abruptly sent home from Iraq. KPBS military reporter Steve Walsh says the commander ordered them out after allegations of misconduct, which seems to be impacting both of these branches of the military. Steve, thanks for joining us. Well, thanks jade. Steve. First, what's being said about why these 16 marines were arrested? What are the allegations against them? Speaker 2: 00:31 So this stems from the case involving a Byron Law. The second and David a cells are a Quintero there. Two marines from Camp Pendleton. They were arrested on July 3rd near the border at Takati. And uh, they were caught according to court documents with law was driving his truck and the in with them was found three undocumented, uh, migrants with them who, uh, said that they were, were paying $8,000 a piece to be smuggled into the United States after the marines were arrested. Uh, yesterday I talked to the major involved in this case. And so she gave me a little more detail Speaker 3: 01:08 throughout the investigation of those two marines that were previously charged. There's an association that they found with those 16 marines. So they're trying to figure out if they should be charged with specific allegations. Speaker 1: 01:21 And that was major Kendra Motts and marines were previously deployed to the US Mexico border where any of the marines involved in helping enforce border security. Speaker 2: 01:30 Now, now we have marines down there where the US Mexico border right now, some of them are from Camp Pendleton as well as 29 palms. But we're told that this is not a, none of these marines were actually deployed down there at that time. They are part of the same battalion in the fifth regiment of the, uh, first marine down there. So they're all from that same battalion. Speaker 1: 01:50 You know, the, the arrest of these 16 marines were made during morning formation. Do you think that was meant to send a message at all? Well, it's, it's hard Speaker 2: 01:58 just say, I mean, I'm, this is something that's already come out. So this are in, in a way, it's already public because these two other marines are already involved in this. So apparently the thought was once the, they arrested 16 other marines and sent another eight into questioning that, uh, they decided to make it public right away even though none of those 16 marines have been charged, there is some indication that they in, some of them are involved with smuggling. Some of them may be involved with drug crimes and things like that. It's very clear that the two marines that are already under, uh, being charged in federal court are starting to talk. So this is where they're getting some other information. Speaker 1: 02:34 Wow. All right. Meanwhile, a San Diego based Navy seals, speaking of which a navy seal pulls tune has been pulled out of I ride for alleged misconduct. Tell us more about that. Speaker 2: 02:44 All right, so this happened, uh, on Wednesday they were pulled from Iraq. The, a major general in charge of the joint task force declared that that entire platoon should be removed from Iraq for conduct unbecoming. We haven't received um, officially yet all the details of, of why they were removed. We hear allegations of drinking, maybe even allegations of, of, of sexual assault, but we have, nothing's really come out officially. What is so unusual in that case is these are members of seal team seven. Now we didn't know that there was a platoon from seal team seven interact right now the movements of seal teams do not become public. So the, the notion that right after this happened in Iraq that what US Special Forces Command actually issued a press release, a press release and then put it out on Twitter that the, there were sending all of these uh, these seals back home to San Diego. And that I will tell you is incredibly unusual. The movements of seal teams are, are very secretive. Speaker 1: 03:47 This is the same seal team, Chief Editor Eddie Gallagher was a with right Speaker 2: 03:51 indeed. Indeed. So this, if this is a seal team seven, which is based here in San Diego, and of course everybody is, has heard of now of chief Eddie Gallagher who is on trial for war crimes. He was acquitted of the most serious allegation, though he was convicted of posing with a body on the battlefield during that trial. And I covered every single day of that trial. Among the things that came out is that that that platoon of seal team seven had a rooftop bar set up at their safe house outside of Mozel. Uh, some of the officers would take turns and enlist the high enlisted ranking. People would take turns deejaying. It was very open. There were, uh, there were beer cans found in one of the Humvees suggesting that maybe people were out on patrol and drinking at the same time. So it's, it's incredibly embarrassing to the special forces community that has seen a lot of these kinds of incidents come. Speaker 2: 04:43 There are four more seals that are scheduled to go on trial for war crimes later this year. There've been a number of, there are two more seals that are, I'm on trial for a, for murder, for what may have been a hazing incident gone wrong in Mali. There have been others that have been charged with a couple of green baret that had been charged and convicted of smuggling cocaine, others' seals and seal team seven have been, uh, accused of, of using cocaine on a pretty wide base scale. So, uh, there had been headline after headline that has embarrassed the special forces community. Speaker 1: 05:17 Mm. And, and given what's happening with the navy seals and the recent arrest at Camp Pendleton, what do you think this all says about the state of the U S armed forces? Speaker 2: 05:25 Yeah, well about the special forces community in general. They obviously have had a number of these instances and w and the embarrassing headlines don't seem to be over yet. We'd have a new, a, a general that's taken over at Socom, uh, General Richard Clark took over earlier this year at Special Operations Command. Some speculation is that maybe he wants to send a message now congress got involved and they wanted actually asked the special operations command to look at their ethical framework and they, and report back to them. We actually saw a copy of that report. Not a lot of details, but they did look through the whole spectrum, how they're trained all the way down to the statements that commanders are making. You know, frontline commanders are making to their troops. They've looked at it before. It looks like they're gonna have to take another even more serious look at it. Now, I've been speaking with KPBS military reporter, Steve Walsh. Steve, thank you. Thank you. Speaker 4: 06:19 [inaudible].