AZ college football players arrested in 2022 in human smuggling case
A Republic investigation has found American citizens exploiting illegal immigration, directly endangering migrants in Arizona.
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.
The woman was taken by ambulance to a hospital, treated and deported.
The car was towed and impounded.
But by sunrise, Samuelu and Faualo were released without criminal charges, according to Border Patrol records, because the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona declined to prosecute.
It wasn’t the first time an Arizona Christian University football player was arrested by Border Patrol for human smuggling and released without criminal charges, current and former ACU players told The Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network.
One former player detailed his experience the previous semester, how he was recruited on Snapchat to drive migrants from border towns to metro Phoenix.
How he was paid $1,000 per head.
How he made several trips before being stopped, cuffed, booked — and cut loose.
For years, transnational criminal organizations have targeted American teens and young adults on social media and enticed them with the promise of fast and easy money to drive migrants in what’s essentially a black market rideshare service, completing a complex chain of human smuggling into the U.S.
But the issue is far larger and more pervasive than court records suggest.
An 18-month investigation by The Republic has exposed multiple instances of alleged human smuggling by former Arizona Christian University football players who were arrested by Border Patrol and released without criminal charges, revealed a current ACU player who allegedly distributed driving assignments to his teammates, and examined claims that a former ACU assistant and high school coach was involved in the scheme.
The investigation found that far more people are arrested for human smuggling than are prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona.
The federal law enforcement agency regularly declines to prosecute 20% to 25% of suspects arrested for human smuggling by Border Patrol due to inadequate probable cause or the inability of migrants to serve as material witnesses, according to government officials, and has declined to prosecute countless others, including Samuelu and Faualo, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, their lack of criminal history and “Tucson Sector Guidelines,” according to public records.
The revelations expose an often-overlooked facet of an overwhelmed criminal justice system, a clear lack of oversight, at best, by the Arizona Christian University football coaching staff, and detail how illegal immigration — a dominant issue in the upcoming presidential election and state politics — is exploited by American citizens and directly endangers migrants, children and young adults in Arizona.
As another fall sports season kicks off, the findings also raise serious questions about the vetting and compensation of high school and small college coaches, considering their tremendous influence; suggest parents and community leaders must warn teens against transporting migrants; and help to weave a cautionary tale about the value of transparency, demonstrating how silence breeds suspicion and misinformation and blunts accountability.
The Republic filed multiple federal and state public records requests for this investigation.
Border Patrol records were released with redacted names, but Samuelu and Faualo were identified in state police records obtained from the Arizona Department of Public Safety after an attorney for The Republic threatened legal action.
DPS initially denied the documents existed and deleted body camera video of the incident.
But Border Patrol records showed a state trooper initiated the stop.
Another former ACU player explained that by owning his car, he was largely able to keep his earlier arrest and startling release a secret, disappearing into the ether of Snapchat and redacted federal records.
But this time, the impounded vehicle belonged to a teammate’s mother.
And she needed answers.
“Come to find out, it was something that some of the students have been doing, is going down and picking up immigrants at the border and getting quick money,” Carrie Olson told The Republic. “My son plays football, and the two guys that got in trouble were on the football team. After talking with the coach to try to figure out what had happened, that’s kind of what they had found out.”
Chapter 2: The Firestorm
Arizona Christian University is a private, evangelical liberal arts school with about 1,100 students.
It was founded in 1960 as the nonprofit Southwestern Conservative Baptist Bible College, rebranded in 2011 and more than tripled the size of its campus in 2018, when it moved from Phoenix to the former home of the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale.
The transformation occurred under the guidance of longtime president Len Munsil, a hard-right constitutional attorney, the founding former president of the Center for Arizona Policy, an influential conservative advocacy group, and the 2006 Republican gubernatorial nominee.
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance held a rally on July 31 at Arizona Christian, where he stood before a large American flag and ACU banners and told the crowd that “more than 10 million illegal aliens have invaded our country” under the watch of “border czar” Kamala Harris, including “violent criminals and terrorists.”
“The media lies to you about that,” he said, “but don’t let them.”
Munsil has written about how Christian ethics do not support illegal immigration.
The ACU campus, originally a World War II-era U.S. Army Air Forces base, is a short drive from Desert Diamond Arena, where Harris and Donald Trump both held recent rallies, and State Farm Stadium, home of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals and some of the nation’s grandest sporting events, from the annual Fiesta Bowl to Super Bowl 57 to the most recent NCAA Division I men’s basketball Final Four.
The Arizona Christian Firestorm play in relative obscurity.
But the football program has established a decadelong winning culture in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), a lower level of competition akin to NCAA Division III, but with athletic scholarships.
Samuelu and Faualo had enrolled at ACU only months before their arrests.
The teens had shared a backfield before the pandemic at Fife High School in Tacoma, Washington, where the bruising, 230-plus-pound running backs were renowned for their physicality.
Samuelu, a vocal team leader, had survived an attack with a box cutter as a high school freshman when his neck and back were slashed in a fight, and he was carted out of a bloody school hallway by paramedics.
Faualo, a year older and the son of a pastor, was team captain as a senior in 2019, spent the 2020 season as a preferred walk-on at the University of Washington, then entered the transfer portal.
Football players at Arizona Christian must sign an affirmation of faith in Christ, attend Tuesday and Thursday chapel and commit to uphold the university’s policies, including “helping to keep fellow students accountable for their actions.”
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Arizona Christian football coach Jeff Bowen, winner of the 2021 NAIA Coach of Character Award, suspended Samuelu and Faualo following their arrests, along with a third player, reserve quarterback James “JJ” Mcelhenny, from nearby Tolleson, current and former ACU players told The Republic. Three classmates said Mcelhenny helped distribute human smuggling assignments to his teammates.
ACU also dismissed assistant coach Kevin Hall Jr., the running backs coach and developmental team offensive coordinator, whose employment ended on Feb. 6, 2022, less than two weeks after the arrests, the university confirmed.
The school cited “completely unrelated” issues related to his job performance.
But Bowen never addressed human smuggling with the team and only made passing mention of Hall’s departure, players said, leading to whispers of a connection and cover-up on the tight-knit campus.
Less than two months later, in April 2022, Hall was named the head football coach at River Valley High School in Mohave Valley, entrusted to oversee and guide teenagers in the northwest corner of the state. He was demoted after one season and quit without saying a word, the school’s athletics director told The Republic.
Hall was on the sideline coaching running backs at Saguaro High School, a state powerhouse, during the Sabercats’ season opener on Aug. 29 in Scottsdale.
“From what I’ve been told, he decided to leave ACU. It was his decision,” Saguaro coach Darius Kelly told The Republic in late July, after Hall helped coach local kids this summer.
Hall “sat down probably four or five times and went through a tense interview process,” Kelly said. “He’s definitely a good man. He has good morals. … I really do trust him here going forward. No doubt about it.”
Last week, Kelly told The Republic that Hall “isn’t on staff” because the assistant coaching job conflicted with his work schedule and that Hall “does not work with Saguaro High School in any capacity.”
Hall did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
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Bowen referred questions to James Griffiths, Arizona Christian’s vice president of administration and general counsel, who confirmed in a written statement to The Republic that three student-athletes were suspended from the football team after an incident on Jan. 25, 2022, in which two players were “detained by the Arizona Department of Public Safety.”
ACU did not identify anyone by name, did not mention the Border Patrol arrests and denied any unlawful activity by the coaching staff.
“Our goal, consistent with our Christian witness, is always to ‘restore and redeem,’” Griffiths wrote in an email to The Republic. “The two students who were detained by DPS left the University at the conclusion of the semester. The third, who was involved but did not participate directly, completed all of the requirements for reinstatement” and has had no further disciplinary issues.
Hall was “dismissed by ACU for reasons completely unrelated to this incident,” Griffiths wrote.
“While some students may have mistakenly assumed there was a connection between his departure and the incident due to the timing, the University’s investigation did not reveal any involvement whatsoever by the part-time coach in the incident involving the students who were detained by DPS.”
Samuelu and Faualo had borrowed the PT Cruiser from Arizona Christian teammate Trenton Olson. He was not suspended by ACU because he loaned his car keys to his teammates without question and had no prior knowledge of their migrant smuggling, his mom told The Republic.
He withdrew from the school shortly after their arrests.
“Arizona Christian University takes accusations of student conduct violations, particularly those of the nature implicated in this incident, very seriously,” Griffiths told The Republic, adding that the university knew of no other such activity by students or staff.
“This one-time incident, which occurred two years ago, was limited in scope and did not result in any criminal charges. The three students involved all promptly confessed, cooperated and were expeditiously disciplined.”
Chapter 3: ‘Just asking to go to jail’
Human smuggling was an open secret among some players on the Arizona Christian football team, according to former ACU quarterback Brady Martin, who said he refused to participate.
Some players were recruited face-to-face and others on social media.
“I loved the state of Arizona, but I learned really quick what type of a school it was,” Martin told The Republic, “because the kid that was touring me asked me if I wanted to go pick up Mexicans at the border and bring them back for $750 a pop.
“JJ was my host. I laughed. I thought he was playing with me,” Martin said.
“And then they were like, ‘He’s not playing, though.’”
Mcelhenny, the third player suspended, denied this allegation in an interview with The Republic, saying he never offered Martin money to smuggle migrants, “of my knowledge.” He declined to discuss his role in the human smuggling arrests of Samuelu and Faualo beyond ACU’s written statement, which he said was provided to him by the school.
“That is all the information you need to know as far as that story goes,” Mcelhenny said. “I personally do not feel comfortable talking about the situation because it was taken care of, it is over and done with, it is now almost 2½ years in the past. Everyone has moved on.”
Three ACU football players told The Republic that Mcelhenny distributed human smuggling assignments to teammates. Two did not want their names in this story for fear of retribution.
Mcelhenny played football for Arizona Christian the last two seasons.
“I asked, ‘Bro, what are you talking about? Are y’all stupid?’” Martin said.
Mcelhenny then allegedly laid out the scheme.
“Four or five immigrants would jump in the car,” Martin said he was told, “and then they’d drive them back to like an AutoZone or a Walmart or whatever back in Glendale. They’d get picked up and they’d get handed the cash right then and there.”
The players even had a vehicle ready.
“And then they tell me that the license plate light is out on the car,” Martin said.
“And I was like, ‘Bro, you guys are so stupid. You guys are literally just asking to go to jail.”
Chapter 4: ‘People they want to prosecute’
Approximately 20% to 25% of suspects arrested by Border Patrol for human smuggling in Arizona are not prosecuted, federal authorities told The Republic.
John R. Modlin, the chief patrol agent of Tucson Sector, said a supervisor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona might determine that an aspect of the traffic stop was problematic, or perhaps, that there’s greater investigative value in this person, “and we can sort of make a bigger case out of this further down the road.”
Gary M. Restaino, the U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona, cited two primary reasons why “some not insignificant portion” of cases referred for prosecution are declined:
Either the Border Patrol agent did not convey adequate probable cause that a federal crime had been committed before making the stop, or the migrants are unable or unwilling to identify smugglers and serve as material witnesses.
The issue was exacerbated by Title 42, a pandemic-era immigration policy that enabled swift deportations, in lieu of detainments, based on public health concerns. It expired in May 2023.
“We want to proceed on as many of these adult alien smuggling cases as we can,” Restaino said.
Border Patrol does not release aggregate data about the U.S. citizens it arrests, but public records appear to reveal a far greater disparity between human smuggling arrests and prosecutions than the 20% to 25% estimate from federal officials. The records also reveal a third major reason the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona has declined to prosecute:
The sheer caseload.
Human smuggling and college football: A timeline of The Republic’s reporting
The federal agency has reported between 188 and 335 prosecutions for human smuggling per quarter since the start of 2022, far more than at any point during the pandemic and among the most in the nation, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
That’s an average of two to four prosecutions per day.
Border Patrol agents, however, reported 18 traffic stops resulting in 26 arrests for human smuggling in Tucson Sector from Jan. 24 to Jan. 25, 2022, including the incident with Samuelu and Faualo, according to redacted federal records obtained by The Republic through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The 48-hour window offers a small sample — but reveals an average of 13 arrests per day.
At least seven of the 26 people arrested — more than a quarter, records show — were not prosecuted because of the COVID-19 pandemic and their lack of criminal history, in accordance with “Tucson Sector Guidelines.”
The group included Samuelu and Faualo in the PT Cruiser with an injured female in the backseat; the driver of a maroon Ford Taurus that two migrants bailed from and ran as it was being pursued by aircraft; the driver of a red Ford Mustang three migrants bailed out of during pursuit; the driver of a black GMC Yukon with four migrants in the SUV; and the driver and front-seat passenger of a gray Hyundai Elantra with two migrants in the back seat.
Border Patrol records do not uniformly indicate whether those arrested for human smuggling were prosecuted.
At least 13 of the 26 suspects — half — were held in custody, with four definitely prosecuted and nine pending prosecution.
Eight were released — the seven previously mentioned and another pending prosecution.
And for five, the disposition is unknown.
If all 14 suspects prosecuted and pending prosecution in this span were charged with human smuggling, it would average seven per day, more than triple the rate reported for the quarter by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“They have priorities,” Modlin told The Republic. “They have a certain amount of personnel working there. They have a certain amount of space on the docket … and you’ve got all these federal agencies in this area all vying for court time. They all have people they want to prosecute.
“And they may decide that, hey, there’s a fentanyl trafficking case, and that one is more important than this case. Or something else.”
Chapter 5: Human smuggling vs. human trafficking
Human smuggling and human trafficking are distinct terms and crimes.
In the United States, human smuggling, officially “alien smuggling” (8 U.S.C. § 1324), includes sneaking a migrant into the U.S., transporting and harboring a migrant already illegally in the country and conspiring to commit or aid or abet any such activity, either knowingly or with reckless disregard for their unlawful presence.
The migrants are willing participants.
Human trafficking involves exploiting people for labor (18 U.S.C. § 1589) or sex acts (18 U.S.C. § 1591) through force, fraud or coercion, essentially a modern-day slave trade.
One is a crime against a border, the other a crime against a person, though they can overlap, according to experts, because smuggled migrants are vulnerable to involuntary servitude to pay off debts.
“Although human smuggling is very different from human trafficking,” according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “human smuggling can turn into trafficking if the smuggler uses force, fraud, or coercion to hold people against their will for the purposes of labor or sexual exploitation.”
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The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported 4,056 human smuggling offenses nationwide in fiscal 2022, including 745 — an average of two per day — in the District of Arizona.
That was third-most in the country, behind only the Southern and Western Districts of Texas (1,357 and 1,090), which averaged between three and four offenses per day.
A majority of those charged nationally were Hispanic (81%) male (76%) U.S. citizens (74%) who had little or no prior criminal history (61%).
Their average age was 33.
Nearly 87% were sentenced to prison for an average of 15 months.
A mere 0.5% had held a migrant against their will.
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Similarly, just 0.5% of the total migrant encounters in fiscal 2022 involved foreigners with prior criminal convictions (12,028), either in the U.S. or abroad, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
For more than half of those, the crime was illegal entry or re-entry (6,797).
There were 2,239 migrants convicted of drug possession or trafficking, 365 sex offenders and 62 guilty of homicide or manslaughter.
Out of 2.4 million migrant encounters.
“Sometimes when people see the focus on the aliens crossing over, they think, ‘Oh, those are bad people,’” Restaino said. “When all the evidence suggests most people coming to America are doing so for a better life for their family.”
Chapter 6: ‘They could hear her screaming’
Samuelu confirmed that he and Faualo had been suspended from the Arizona Christian football team but denied any knowledge of human smuggling and blamed poor grades.
“We took our responsibility, our accountability as men,” Samuelu told The Republic in spring 2023, long before DPS released public records corroborating their arrests.
Samuelu played football last season under a different name, Malakai Asoau-Koke, at the College of San Mateo in California, graduated in May and has worked in private security, according to social media posts.
Faualo had a season-ending injury at ACU and moved home to live with family, Samuelu told The Republic.
Neither responded to further requests for comment.
Faualo’s older sibling pledged to forward several messages but added, “my brother’s not much of a talker so if something was happening out there he won’t speak.”
Samuelu said he and Faualo never borrowed Olson’s car, never drove to Bisbee, never had an injured Mexican woman in the back seat or handcuffs on their wrists and disavowed any knowledge of Mcelhenny’s suspension for his involvement.
Former teammates said the players had shared a harrowing account.
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On the night Samuelu and Faualo were arrested, they took Olson’s car, “the one with the light out,” said Martin, the former ACU quarterback.
“And they think the reason that Border Patrol let them go is because a woman got stuck in a canal or river, and they could hear her screaming.”
Samuelu had pulled over at the GPS coordinates provided in his instructions and a family of three migrants had piled into the car, Martin said he was told, but there was one more, yelling, and Faualo followed her cries, using the flashlight on his phone to spot the woman in distress.
“He’s like, ‘I heard her screaming, bro, and I just had to run in there and save her.’
“Saved her life,” Martin said.
“That’s a real dude right there. God bless him.”
Faualo injured his leg in between rocks, Martin said he was told, but dragged the woman up to the street and into the car through his adrenaline.
The group didn’t get far before seeing police lights.
“He said they got about three, four football fields down the road and their car got lit up,” Martin said.
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The Arizona Department of Public Safety made the stop, according to U.S. Border Patrol records, which corroborated numerous details of the story.
A state trooper in Bisbee had pulled over a Chrysler PT Cruiser with Washington state tags because its license plate light was out. The trooper radioed for assistance from Border Patrol and an ambulance because of an injured female in the car, the responding federal agent wrote.
The names of the driver and passenger, both U.S. citizens, as well as the name of the Mexican woman, who was dressed in camouflage and unable to walk because of a leg injury, were redacted due to federal privacy regulations.
But Samuelu was identified as the driver and Faualo as the passenger in DPS dispatch records.
The PT Cruiser was registered to Carrie Olson.
Samuelu was issued a repair warning for the license plate light.
DPS initially claimed it had no documents related to this traffic stop and earlier this year closed a state public records request from The Republic.
The request had included numerous accurate details about the incident, including the approximate time, date and location of the stop, the make, model and color of the impounded vehicle, which had a Washington state license plate, and identified Samuelu as the driver.
After an attorney representing The Republic threatened legal action, based on the Border Patrol records, DPS released three written documents from the incident.
The agency also mistakenly provided a body camera video from an unrelated and benign traffic stop on Jan. 24, 2022, the day before Samuelu and Faualo were arrested.
When informed of the error and pressed to release the correct bodycam video, an attorney for DPS told an attorney for The Republic that the video of the Arizona Christian University football players with an injured migrant woman on Jan. 25, 2022 — a video taken the day after the one mistakenly sent to The Republic — had been deleted more than a year earlier, “consistent with the State Library’s General Retention Schedules, and it cannot be recovered.”
Chapter 7: Request for assistance
The DPS dispatch records obtained by The Republic show a state trooper initiated the traffic stop at 10:42 p.m. on State Route 80 at milepost 341 in Bisbee, a historic mining town nestled 5,500 feet in the Mule Mountains of southeast Arizona, its elevation higher than its population.
They were 11 miles from Mexico and only minutes from Banning Creek, a tributary of the San Pedro River that travels alongside and crosses under the road, according to U.S. Geological Survey maps.
The air was dry and bitter cold that night, the temperature dipping into the low 30s, according to National Weather Service records.
The streambed was dry, USGS data shows.
Tombstone Canyon has a history of damaging floods, according to a report from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, particularly during the late summer monsoon, when torrential rainfall “drains through Mule Gulch, right through downtown Bisbee — through flumes, ditches, culverts and box channels, then out into the old Lavender Pit copper mine south of town.”
Samuelu and Faualo were stopped near such a canal, which in late January has “very low or no flow,” but may be slippery, according to Matthew Gurney, Bisbee’s director of Public Works.
Four minutes later, at 10:46 p.m., the state trooper radioed for Border Patrol to respond.
One minute later, at 10:47 p.m., the trooper reported the car contained two U.S. citizens and one suspected migrant, according to dispatch records.
But this line indicates the document was edited.
It’s possible the other three migrants, in Martin’s retelling of the story, ran off into the rugged wilderness as unofficial “got-aways,” the federal statistic for migrants who evade capture.
Six minutes later, at 10:53 p.m., DPS dispatch reported that Border Patrol would send someone. There was no ETA.
The DPS officer ran the name Malakai Robert Samuelu, who presented a driver’s license from Washington state.
He ran the name Meamoni Faualo, also from Washington.
Sixteen minutes later, at 11:09 p.m., the state trooper radioed for Bisbee Fire to respond.
The responding Border Patrol agent later wrote that he received a request for assistance for a DPS traffic stop at approximately 11:15 p.m. — more than 30 minutes after the stop began. At that point, he was informed that a state trooper had one possible migrant in custody.
Upon arrival, the DPS officer told the Border Patrol agent that he had requested emergency medical services for a woman who couldn’t walk and that she was being evaluated in an ambulance, where the Border Patrol agent found a female dressed in camouflage.
The woman admitted she was a citizen of Mexico and did not have immigration documents to enter or remain in the U.S., according to federal records.
At 11:41 p.m., the Border Patrol agent ran a Washington state driver’s license.
At 11:43 p.m., the agent requested a tow for storage for a PT Cruiser with a Washington state plate.
At 11:45 p.m., the agent arrested two U.S. citizens for human smuggling and transported them to a nearby Border Patrol station for further processing.
At 11:55 p.m., DPS reported the migrant was driven by ambulance to a hospital for further evaluation. Federal records indicate she was expelled from the country under Title 42.
At 12:15 a.m., the tow truck arrived.
A phone rang nearly 1,700 miles away.
Carrie Olson said she was startled awake in the middle of the night in her home near Tacoma, Wash., by a call from a man with an Arizona area code, which she corroborated with phone records, pinpointing the time and date of the incident. He said her car was involved in a situation near Bisbee, impounded by Border Patrol and taken to Mac’s Towing in Sierra Vista.
“They said that they would hold it until I came and got it,” Olson said, “and I’m trying to tell them, ‘I don’t even live in Arizona! That’s my son’s car! He has no way to get down there!’
“But it was under my name, so I had to be the one to go get it.”
Chapter 8: ‘Kind of like Uber’
The Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector stretches across 262 miles of Arizona’s treacherous, mountainous desert border with Mexico, from the New Mexico state line to Yuma County. It is the largest sector by personnel, with about 3,600 agents and support staff.
Migrant encounters at the Southwest border have skyrocketed since the pandemic, reaching a record of nearly 2.5 million in fiscal year 2023, which ran from Oct. 1, 2022, to Sept. 30, 2023.
Encounters are down somewhat in fiscal 2024, but surpassed 2 million for the third consecutive year, according to Border Patrol data.
The reduction is attributable to at least four factors:
The expiration of Title 42 caused fewer migrants to be quickly deported and encountered a second time; U.S. diplomacy led to increased security funding and resources from Mexico; an executive order from President Joe Biden has drastically limited asylum claims since June; and potentially unconstitutional crackdowns by state authorities in Texas, where migrant encounters have plummeted.
But Arizona is an exception, the surge in encounters a likely side effect of the razor wire and buoy barriers blocking the Rio Grande. Smuggling routes have shifted and swelled along the border in Mexican territory controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel, spilling into the desert and across the state line.
Tucson Sector has reported more than 452,000 migrant encounters this fiscal year, by far the most in the country, ballooning more than 40% from the same period a year ago (323,000).
But that’s just part of the problem.
Another disturbing trend emerged, on the streets and online.
“What we started to see was a lot of young people coming out of Phoenix to come and pick up these groups,” Modlin said, estimating that high school- and college-age drivers account for 20% of stops.
“And the more we looked into it, we recognized they were being recruited off of social media.”
The Republic found numerous posts on Snapchat, Instagram and other social media sites advertising big paydays for drivers in Arizona border towns, including Bisbee, Sierra Vista and Douglas. These posts often displayed fans of cash and baby chicken emojis.
The Spanish translation, “pollos” or “pollitos,” is slang for migrants.
Human smugglers are “polleros” or “coyotes.”
Modlin told The Republic that Border Patrol agents have stopped children as young as 14 years old who have borrowed cars to transport migrants without their parents’ knowledge.
Some don’t stop for law enforcement, speed and drive erratically, further endangering themselves and the public.
Some try to hide migrants in toolboxes and trunks, courting heatstroke and death.
Some are armed.
“Many agents have teenage children of their own,” Modlin said, “and it’s hard not to project when you see someone else’s kid there that has made that terrible decision.”
Aggravating factors often result in additional criminal charges and increase the likelihood of prosecution.
“A lot of the kids, to them, their first thought is, ‘Hey, this is kind of like Uber. Like this is a rideshare thing. I’m just going to go and pick somebody up,’” Modlin said.
“And the challenge is, they have no idea who’s getting in the vehicle with them. They have no idea this person’s criminal history. They don’t know anything about them.”
He described a typical traffic stop for human smuggling.
“The agent generally will approach the car, assuming it’s as smooth as possible. The person just stops, nobody runs from the vehicle,” Modlin said. “He will interview the people in the car, find out they’re in the country without permission. They would obviously be arrested. The driver is arrested at that point. We would tow the vehicle. … And then we present the case to the U.S. Attorney. We say, ‘Hey, here’s all the facts,’ and the U.S. Attorney ultimately decides if they’re going to prosecute it or not.”
Border Patrol does not unilaterally decide to release anyone it arrests for human smuggling, Modlin said.
Those prosecuted are turned over to the U.S. Marshals Service and scheduled for an initial hearing.
The rest are booked and released, with their information maintained in a law enforcement database.
Chapter 9: ‘Classic prosecutorial discretion’
Restaino, the U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona since November 2021, told The Republic that prosecutions for human smuggling dropped during the pandemic as it became more difficult to detain material witnesses — the migrants — and get court time.
The decision to decline to prosecute and release the Arizona Christian football players in the middle of the night came from his office.
“We’re looking for consistency on this,” Restaino said. “On any given day we’ve got one of the supervisors reviewing all of the arrests and deciding, based on those reports, which ones we can go forward on.”
Human smuggling is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison per migrant — or longer, in the event of injury or death — but some charges are reduced to misdemeanors based on mitigating factors.
“Classic prosecutorial discretion,” Restaino said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office reserves the right to prosecute a suspect for human smuggling for five years but does not typically revisit cases it initially declined to pursue.
“The ethical approach at its core is we’re not going forward unless we have a readily provable case,” Restaino said. “And if there are some of these circumstances that present us from readily proving it, whether it’s the stop or it’s the intransigence of a material witness … then we’re not going to go forward on that. And that’s why there’s always going to be declinations.”
He said he saw no pattern in the suspects who weren’t charged and denied favoritism toward athletes.
His office would rarely know whether someone was an athlete when Border Patrol presented a potential human smuggling case, he said, and after a “light survey of our group,” cited five recent cases in which he knew an athlete was involved, but only because the information was gleaned in discussions with defense counsel.
“Four in college. One in high school. We go from baseball to football to track and field,” Restaino said.
Federal court records are not readily searchable by offense.
The names of the athletes are unknown.
Last spring, the Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats — a collaboration by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies — released a nearly 2½-minute video as part of a public service campaign that featured a young athlete’s mea culpa after she was arrested and charged with human smuggling.
In the video, the unidentified teen, donning a gray Nirvana T-shirt, braces and braids, explains how she was recruited face-to-face by a friend, but caught by Border Patrol, handcuffed and jailed.
“Losing, like, your freedom to do anything was just — it just felt so bad,” she says in the video. “And the entire time I just couldn’t stop crying and, like, thinking, like, I want to call my mom and I want to go home and I just wish I never did it.”
Her sentence, like her identity, is unknown.
Juveniles often aren’t tried in the federal system, Restaino said, because “we really have to take into account rehabilitation as much as we do deterrence.”
At least 37 juveniles have been prosecuted for alien smuggling in Arizona since Restaino was sworn into office — 13 in 2022, 17 last year and seven in the first half of this year, according to data released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona.
Chapter 10: The gas station
Samuelu and Faualo were not the first Arizona Christian football players arrested by Border Patrol for human smuggling and released without charges.
Another former ACU player recounted his experience from the previous semester, during football season in fall 2021, on the condition that his name not be used in this story.
Because state police were not involved in his traffic stop and he was not prosecuted, his name does not appear in public law enforcement or court records.
“They had me in a little jail,” the former ACU player said, recalling the cold walls of his cell, likely at the Brian A. Terry Border Patrol Station in Bisbee. “I went in there for a couple of hours when they were doing my background check and everything, and they called me in, they tried to give me ‘the talk’ and everything.
“I told them whatever I knew. I didn’t really know a lot.”
The former ACU player said he was recruited through Snapchat to drive migrants from Sierra Vista to Phoenix and acted alone — absolving the ACU coaching staff and his teammates of any prior knowledge of his activities.
He said someone named “X3” provided GPS coordinates, instructions and cash.
“But I never saw the dude’s face, nothing like that,” the former ACU player said. “We’d pull up the car by each other and they’d hop out my car, hop in his car and we’d just take off. It was $1,000 for each head. I would always drive back four people. So I would get $4,000. I did it three times. The fourth time, that’s when I got caught.”
He was surprised Border Patrol released him and recounted a conversation with the federal agents.
“They saw my record was clean and they’re like, ‘You’re a good kid. You play college football. You shouldn’t be doing this shit.’
“I was like, ‘Yeah, I know.’”
“It’s fast money. But it’s going to mess with your whole career, your whole life,” the former ACU player said he was told.
“He said, ‘This is the one, man. I’m letting you go. You’re going to have to go get your car from where they had it towed.’”
“And I asked him how I was going to get back to Glendale.
“He’s like, ‘That’s going to be on your own.’
“They dropped me off at the gas station in Sierra Vista and I had to find my way back.”
The former ACU football player did not share the date of his arrest, which, coupled with Border Patrol’s strict privacy regulations, makes his account nearly impossible to corroborate with public records.
The Republic, however, reviewed the redacted records of all Border Patrol traffic stops that resulted in human smuggling arrests in Tucson Sector from Jan. 24 to 25, 2022, a 48-hour window that included Samuelu’s and Faualo’s arrests.
In at least one incident, the person was released at a Circle K gas station, a detail that matches the former player’s account from months earlier.
The former ACU player said he was released alongside another young man who had been arrested for human smuggling, though his accomplice remained in jail.
He said he charged his phone with a cord he borrowed at the gas station and spent the rest of the night by a fire with a homeless man.
He tried to keep the incident a secret from all but one teammate, who helped him return to campus, and transferred to a different school by the next semester, when Samuelu and Faualo were found with an injured woman in a teammate’s mother’s car.
“That’s where they fucked up at,” the former ACU player said. “If they were using their own car, nobody would have got caught.”
Chapter 11: ‘Like nothing happened’
After being released by Border Patrol in the “middle of the desert,” Samuelu and Faualo called another ACU football player, who told Martin about the arrests before leaving on the 450-mile round-trip drive to retrieve them.
Martin then admonished Mcelhenny in a text message, he told The Republic, and alleged that Mcelhenny responded by showing up to his dorm room with four other teammates wearing ski masks, trying to intimidate him into silence.
Martin said he remained calm, sat in a chair and told the group he’d keep quiet.
The episode did not become violent.
“The next day, I went and played 7-on-7,” Martin said. “They tried to pretend like nothing happened.”
Mcelhenny acknowledged he went to Martin’s room to discuss receiving a critical text message on the night Samuelu and Faualo were arrested — but told The Republic he went alone and that Arizona Christian reviewed security camera footage as part of its internal investigation to corroborate his less dramatic version of events.
ACU’s attorney, Griffiths, contradicted the assertion.
“Campus Safety was not notified of any dorm room incident at the time of the alleged incident,” Griffiths told The Republic, “and only learned of the allegations when you asked many months later, so they had no reason to review security footage at the time.
“Security camera footage would have been deleted in February 2022 — it gets taped over after 30 days.”
Martin said he never reported the incident to coaches, campus security or police because teammates told him the running backs coach was involved, and he didn’t know who to trust.
***
Martin, a former Division I prospect whose father played at Air Force, was a quarterback at Division III Endicott College in Massachusetts only months earlier, when he was recruited by Arizona Christian and enticed by a fresh start in the desert.
He enrolled in January 2022.
But after Samuelu and Faualo were arrested for human smuggling, released without criminal charges and left the university; after Mcelhenny had allegedly threatened him, been suspended from spring practice and reinstated; after Hall was fired, only to become the head coach at a high school; Martin said his faith in the ACU coaching staff cratered when he was ruled ineligible to play his first season.
Certain academic credits didn’t transfer from his previous school, he said he was told.
“I should have never gone to that place,” Martin said.
He struggled to reconcile the situation. He tried to connect the dots.
How could a teammate who allegedly distributed human smuggling assignments be eligible to play, Martin wondered, while he was suddenly sidelined for a paperwork issue the coaches should have known about long before he arrived on campus?
***
Some within the Arizona Christian football program, Martin noted, have direct connections to law enforcement and the highest levels of university leadership, beginning with Bowen, who has coached high school and college athletes in Arizona with distinction for nearly 40 years.
He joined the ACU football program as the running game coordinator in 2014 and remains heavily involved in that aspect of the game, players said.
Brett Nelson, the running game coordinator and offensive line coach since 2020 and the former assistant athletic director of compliance, is the son-in-law of President Munsil.
ACU’s head of campus security, Corey Quinn, is a former homicide detective and the father of Aidan Quinn, the program’s all-time leading rusher.
Corey Quinn declined to comment to The Republic.
Aidan Quinn graduated from ACU in May 2023 and the Phoenix Police Academy in November 2023.
He told The Republic that he was unaware of any human smuggling by his former teammates and that “I have no contact with Kevin Hall.”
He did not provide further details.
ACU’s attorney, pressed for further insight about Hall’s dismissal given his assertion it was unrelated to the human smuggling arrests, wrote in an email to The Republic:
“I can confirm that the employee was terminated for issues related to his job performance, not anything to do with the incident referred to in your email,” Griffiths wrote. “Our investigation revealed that the connection to the unlawful activity came from one of the student’s former high school classmates. The part-time coach had nothing to do with it.”
***
Mcelhenny played quarterback for three years at Tolleson High School until his senior season was canceled because of the pandemic, then transferred to Ironwood High School, where he played safety and receiver less than two miles from Arizona Christian.
He also shifted from quarterback to defensive back after his suspension from the ACU football team in spring 2022 and is listed as a wide receiver on the 2024 roster.
“The situation was very humbling, but it was also a time to reflect and mature as a person,” Mcelhenny said about his suspension. “Personally, it was time to dive into the Bible and spend time with family and continue working at my job and just becoming a better man, myself, wholeheartedly. And it was tough being away from those players, from that brotherhood, but those bonds never go away.”
Mcelhenny said he did not remain in touch with Samuelu and Faualo after their arrests, nor with Martin, who moved home to Massachusetts after the semester and called The Republic.
“The reason why Brady is gone is because of his attitude and his character,” Mcelhenny said. “And that was portrayed to him through the coaches.”
Mcelhenny said Martin had threatened to create an anonymous social media account to spread lies about him and forwarded screenshots of a text exchange to The Republic as evidence.
In one comment from Feb. 4, 2022, a little more than a week after the arrests, Mcelhenny texted Martin:
“Yoo, I don’t want no drama between us, I’m sorry for coming at you. I definitely blew things outta proportion. Hopefully we can start back on the right foot,” with a fingers crossed emoji.
Martin responded with a series of threats and insults, including: “when I make a Twitter burner and expose all the shit you did that’s gon be even more fun.”
Nothing in the screenshots indicated that Martin would make up lies.
Mcelhenny said he intends to join the police academy after college.
“It is my goal,” he said, “to become a cop.”
Chapter 12: ‘A players’ coach’
In mid-March 2022, about six weeks after being fired from Arizona Christian, Hall took a customer service job with Enterprise Rent-A-Car at Sky Harbor Airport and applied to become the head football coach and a physical education teacher at River Valley High School, according to documents he submitted to the Colorado River Union High School District #2, obtained by The Republic through a state open records request.
He wrote that his reason for leaving ACU was a desire to lead his own team at the high school level.
He claimed he was certified by the Board of Education to teach in Arizona and provided an expiration date for a teaching certificate, but never submitted proof.
He stated that he had never been fired or forced to resign from a job with any school district.
He was hired.
Hall’s resume shows he’s from Milton, Florida, just outside Pensacola.
He played running back at two Division II schools, the University of North Alabama and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C.
He’s been an assistant coach at several high schools in Florida, Nevada and Arizona.
He listed several references.
The athletics director and football coach at Mountain Pointe High School in Phoenix, where he spent six months as the wide receivers coach in 2019, before his stint at Arizona Christian, both provided recommendations, as did the football coach at Lutheran Christian in Las Vegas, where Hall worked as an assistant for three years before moving to Arizona.
It does not appear that anyone from River Valley spoke with anyone from Arizona Christian.
Hall was hired on March 31, 2022, the same day a district employee checked his references at Mountain Pointe, records show.
He received a salary of $40,825 as the full-time physical education teacher — and $3,500 to serve three months as head football coach.
His start date was July 15, 2022.
“I’m a player’s coach,” Hall told the Mohave Valley Daily News. “I wouldn’t tell my players to do something I wouldn’t do. I lead by example.”
A month into Hall’s tenure, in August 2022, the Dust Devils were cited by the Arizona Interscholastic Association for recruiting and heat-safety violations, having allegedly attempted to lure players from nearby California and Nevada and ramped up preseason practice in helmets and pads too quickly in scorching summer conditions.
River Valley had lofty expectations. It returned its senior quarterback from a 10-2 team that nearly reached the state quarterfinals the year before. But the Dust Devils went 6-3 with blowout losses to nearby Kingman, 44-0, and Mohave, 43-0, and finished second in the 3A West Region.
Hall was demoted after the season and then quit without notice, leaving his keys on his desk and walking out, the school’s principal and athletics director, Dorn Wilcox, told The Republic, saying the team “did not grow under his leadership.”
Chapter 13: Another serious talk
Trenton Olson was absolved of any wrongdoing by the Arizona Christian coaching staff because, according to his mom, he never asked Samuelu and Faualo why they wanted to borrow his car and had no advance knowledge of their plan to smuggle migrants.
His grandparents drove from Southern California to Sierra Vista with a notarized letter to retrieve the impounded PT Cruiser.
“When I got it back, it was just filthy,” Carrie Olson said. “There was clothing, coats, all kinds of stuff left in it, and you could tell whoever was sitting in it had been through something because they left their jackets in there, and it was muddy. There was grass, leaves, all kind of stuff in the car. Little sticker bushes. The seats were muddy, dirty. I had to have it cleaned once we got it back.”
Carrie Olson said she spoke with Bowen, the longtime Arizona Christian head coach, and Shawn Cooper, then the longtime recruiting coordinator and receivers coach. Both seemed “pretty clueless” about human smuggling by ACU football players and asked for her help gathering information.
“My son started asking around other players, other students, and they were the ones that were talking, like, ‘Yeah, people are going down there and doing this and making good, quick money,’” Carrie Olson said. “And if it’s an easy setup and just something you can do in one night, I can see why they would do it. But that’s scary.”
Trenton Olson didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation at first.
“My son’s just like, ‘Well, you just pick people up.’
“I’m like, ‘You’re putting strangers in your car. Where are they from? Where are they getting this huge amount of money when they’re trying to come over? What are they carrying on them in your car? You would have no idea.’
“And then he starts thinking, ‘Well, yeah, I guess that does make sense.’”
Trenton Olson withdrew from Arizona Christian, moved home and walked onto the football team at Washington State University.
Samuelu and Faualo supposedly promised to reimburse his mom for the impound fee and clean the car, but they stopped responding to his messages long ago.
He ponied up the several hundred dollars himself.
“He’s the one that loaned the car,” Carrie Olson said, “so I made him pay for it. Your fault.”
She sold the PT Cruiser and bought a new vehicle.
They tried to move on.
But her son received no playing time at Washington State, missed his friends and returned to Arizona Christian last fall.
They had another serious talk before he drove back to Glendale.
“I was like, ‘We’re not borrowing out cars anymore. We’re not going down, picking up any quick money.’
“He said, ‘Oh, no. No.’
“He talked to a couple of his teammates that are still there and they were saying that they didn’t think that it was going on anymore.”
Carrie Olson hadn’t heard about the third Arizona Christian football player suspended in connection with her PT Cruiser being impounded.
Or the former player who said he was propositioned to drive her car to smuggle migrants, “the one with the light out,” and refused.
Or the former player who said he was arrested and released by Border Patrol on his fourth trip to smuggle migrants the previous semester, during football season.
Or any alleged connection between the human smuggling and ACU coaching staff.
“I can’t see them covering anything up or anything like that,” she said.
“It’s a Christian school.”
Her son earned a degree in communications from ACU in May and returned to the school to play football this season as a graduate student.
“I honestly think that if the coaches knew more about it,” she said, “they would have definitely done something.”
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Publish date : 2024-09-22 00:30:00
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