Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Israeli-American sentenced to time served in border smuggling case

Prosecutors said that he tried to bring a man, who was hiding under luggage in the back of a vehicle, into the United States through a border crossing.

Close-up of a wooden gavel. Credit: Sora Shimazaki/Pexels.
Close-up of a wooden gavel. Credit: Sora Shimazaki/Pexels.

Israeli-American citizen Israel Enden, 46, was sentenced to time served in federal court in Buffalo, N.Y., after pleading guilty to bringing an unauthorized migrant into the United States from Canada, the U.S. Justice Department said on Monday.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York said that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers stopped Enden, who was born in the United States, at the Rainbow Bridge crossing on Jan. 8 after he failed to produce a rental agreement for the Canadian-plated vehicle he was driving.

During a secondary inspection, officers found Israeli citizen Elazar Wigdorowitz hiding under luggage in the vehicle.

Investigators said that the men had flown together from Warsaw to Toronto the previous day and that Enden knew that Wigdorowitz lacked authorization to enter the United States.

Wigdorowitz previously pleaded guilty to improper entry by an alien, was sentenced to time served and was transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

“You can’t send an 18-year-old off to college without filling in many blanks before they leave, about why being Jewish is important,” the longtime Jewish communal leader told JNS.
“I am the one always encouraging students to get comfortable with opposing ideas,” a professor at Seattle Central College told JNS. “This is not it.”
“The defendant exploited the barbaric acts of terror perpetrated on Oct. 7, 2023, to attract donors to his fraudulent ‘humanitarian’ causes,” the U.S. Justice Department alleged.
A transcript of the deal’s text read aloud by a senior U.S. official in a call with reporters on June 17.
“Am I going to say I’m going to take you to court?” the U.S. president told reporters at the G7 summit in France. “No, we’re going to bomb the hell out of them if they violate the agreement.”
The senior official read aloud the text of the Trump administration’s memorandum of understanding with Iran in a call with reporters, revealing the full text.