A Virginia man accused of smuggling nearly 300 Somalis into the United States from Kenya is set to go to trial Monday morning in Alexandria’s federal court, but the government’s evidence may be slim if authorities haven’t located any of the illegal immigrants.
The search, first reported by the Washington Examiner, started in early February after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Anthony Joseph Tracy on charges that he helped smuggle the Somalis. The 35-year-old has since been indicted on charges of conspiring with Cuban Embassy officials in Kenya to help the Somalis illegally enter the United States. A separate charge that Tracy lied on a U.S. passport application was filed, but later dropped for lack of evidence, court records show.
ICE Agent Thomas Eyre has testified that authorities are “concerned” bout the contact Tracy admitted having with the Somali terrorist organization Al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda ally.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema has questioned Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeanine Linehan about the status of the government’s search for the Somalis. When Linehan said “we have not identified anyone” during an April 11 hearing, Brinkema noted the lack of evidence would make the government’s case “shaky.”
Peter Carr, the spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, declined to comment. Calls to Tracy’s attorney were not returned Friday.
According to court documents, Tracy helped the Somalis move to the United States by getting them travel visas to Cuba through contacts he had at the Cuban Embassy in Kenya. The Somalis are believed to have entered the Untied States through the border with Mexico after making a circuitous trip from Kenya to Dubai to Moscow to Cuba to South America then to Mexico and northward, Eyre testified.
The indictment handed up by the federal grand jury requires prosecutors to prove that Tracy was involved in a conspiracy to smuggle the Somalis. The requirement raises the bar from not only proving the Somalis were smuggled, but also that Tracy was working in league with embassy workers. Strained relations between the United States and Cuba could make it unlikely prosecutors will get much help from the communist country in making that determination.
