ICE knows older Americans are targets for scams that have them smuggle drugs to other countries but is failing to inform and protect them, report finds

• The New York Times reported on an ICE program meant to combat international drug trafficking.
• In the program, ICE tips off countries about people suspected of smuggling, The Times reported.
• Some of those people, however, are thought to be older Americans tricked into acting as mules.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is aware older Americans are targets for scams that fool them into smuggling drugs into other countries but in at least some cases fails to protect them, The New York Times reported.

ICE's Operation Cocoon, a program created in 2013 to disrupt international drug-trafficking rings, involves US officials' sharing information on drug-smuggling suspects with officials in countries where the suspects are traveling.

The Times said the program, however, had been accused of doing too little to protect Americans - especially older ones - who unknowingly end up transporting drugs and other contraband.

In February 2016, Alan Scott Brown, then the acting assistant director for investigative programs at ICE Homeland Security Investigations, testified to Congress about such "unwitting couriers," saying their average age was 59 and the oldest was 87.

Brown added that "the oldest unwitting individual HSI encountered during one of our investigations was 97" but that "HSI special agents identified him before he left the United States to participate in the endeavor and convinced him to abandon his travel plans because he was going to be another unwitting victim."

Most scam victims, however, do not appear to have been that lucky.

It's not clear how many older Americans have been tricked into being drug mules in scams, but The Times reported Sunday that since 2013, more than 180 US citizens had been stopped by law enforcement in foreign airports on suspicion of carrying drugs because of information shared by ICE. About 70% of the more than 400 people stopped in total were said to be older than 60.

The Times reported that in some cases, US officials had allowed older Americans to be caught by foreign investigators and then locked up, despite having reason to think the people were tricked into smuggling drugs.

"If somebody from the US government showed up at my father's house and spoke to my dad and said, 'Hey, look, we have reason to believe you're being scammed,' there's 100% no doubt he would have dropped it," Vic Stemberger, a man whose father is imprisoned in Spain after being caught with more than 5 pounds of cocaine, told The Times. Stemberger told the paper he believed his father had been tricked by drug traffickers.

In 2016, ABC News also reported that a 74-year-old Florida man served an 18-month prison sentence in New Zealand after, he said, he was scammed into transporting meth.

"I lost a lot," the man, Ralph Soles, said at the time. "When I came home, I didn't have a home. I didn't have a home to go home to."

John Eisert, the assistant director of investigative programs for Homeland Security Investigations, told The Times that older Americans weren't ICE's target but that it could sometimes be difficult to make older travelers aware of scams.

Eisert said ICE agents had been instructed to warn suspected victims before they step onto a plane and unwittingly commit a crime.