One if by Land, Two if by Sea — and Three if by Air?

By David North on February 14, 2023

We usually hear about illegal aliens arriving by foot and sometimes in boats, but airborne illegals (unless on commercial flights) are rare.

Homeland Security has now revealed the case of five illegal aliens — already in the U.S. — who were being carried in a Piper Cub flight from one part of Texas to another. They were stopped not by alert enforcement work, but because the plane crashed shortly after take-off, injuring everyone aboard, including the pilot, a citizen.

If the illegals were already in the States, why bother with an airplane ride?

As a not-very-helpful ICE press release does not explain, the entrants were probably seeking to bypass one of those very useful Border Patrol highway checkpoints that are located some miles back from the border, in this case between Presidio and Marfa in austere West Texas.

The plane took off from the little airport in Presidio and crashed within a few thousand feet after take-off.

It so happens that I was there some years ago on a research project. As one drives south toward Presidio, over the mountain, one can no longer hear any English-language radio. Presidio is a small, remote, poverty-stricken border town and any sensible illegal alien wants to get out of there as soon as he can. The only way out by road runs into a BP checkpoint a few miles north of town. The five illegals must have known that, hence the ill-fated plane ride.

This happened in December 2021. It all came to light when the pilot, Tobias Penner Peters, pleaded guilty on February 2 to “transporting undocumented noncitizens causing serious bodily injury”. One of the five illegals is in a wheelchair as a result of a back injury in the crash.

Peters will be sentenced in federal court, in Alpine, Texas, on April 25.