'Kind of like Uber': Arizona Christian football players caught in migrant smuggling scheme
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Late on the night of Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2022, on a cold desert highway cutting through the outskirts of Bisbee, an old copper mining town in the Mule Mountains, near the U.S. border with Mexico, an Arizona state trooper stopped a green 2006 Chrysler PT Cruiser.
A busted light shrouded its license plate in darkness.
The trooper approached the car and, within minutes, identified two American men and an injured female, a migrant from Mexico. He radioed for U.S. Border Patrol to respond.
Within a half hour, he called for Bisbee Fire and Ambulance.
Malakai Robert Samuelu had presented the officer with a driver’s license from Washington state, as did his front-seat passenger, Meamoni “Junior” Faualo. They were longtime friends and first-year football players at Arizona Christian University, on this night more than 200 miles from their tiny private school in Glendale, driving a car they had borrowed from an ACU teammate.
In the backseat was the injured woman, dressed in camouflage, unable to walk.
Within an hour of the stop, Samuelu and Faualo were in federal custody, arrested by Border Patrol on suspicion of human smuggling, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison per migrant, or longer in the event of injury or death.
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