A Pakistani national pleaded guilty in federal court April 30 to charges related to running an international human smuggling conspiracy that included transporting illegal immigrants from Pakistan to the United States using fake film production companies, federal prosecutors announced.
Abbas Ali Haider, 49, of Sialkot, Pakistan, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Tucson in July 2025 and was extradited to the United States from Mexico that month. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bring aliens to the United States for private financial gain and profit.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 30 and faces a minimum penalty of three years in prison and a maximum of 10.
According to court documents, prosecutors claimed Haider operated two fake Pakistan-based film companies called Diamond TV World Productions and Multimedia Advertising Ltd.
From September 2019 through September 2023, Haider allegedly obtained visas fraudulently for Pakistani nationals to travel to Ecuador, Cuba, and Columbia, under the cover of legitimate business travel when their real destination was the southern U.S. border.
The individuals posed as Haider’s employees and told border officials they were traveling to work on films, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors claimed Haider provided the Pakistani nationals with phony paperwork indicating that they worked for his companies, which they used at ports of entry in Panama, Brazil, and Colombia.
“Haider coached the aliens to say they worked in the film industry to deceive and thwart customs and border officials,” the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stated in July 2025.
The Pakistani nationals were admitted to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, prosecutors said.
Haider’s network then allegedly guided them to the U.S.–Mexico border where they illegally crossed into California, Texas, and Arizona.
Haider charged each person as much as $40,000 for the border crossing, according to court documents.
He traveled from Pakistan to Mexico in late 2024 and was arrested in Mexico in January 2025 at the request of the U.S. government, the DOJ said.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) vehicle patrols along the U.S.–Mexico border wall in Nogales, Ariz., on Sept. 16, 2025. (Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)
The investigation and indictment were supported and prosecuted by Joint Task Force Alpha, the DOJ’s team focused on combating high-impact human smuggling and trafficking committed by cartels and transnational criminal organizations.
Human trafficking occurs across every state and territory in the United States, according to federal officials. The majority of forced labor victims are male, and the majority of commercial sexual exploitation victims are women and girls.
In 2024, the National Human Trafficking Hotline received a total of 32,309 signals nationwide of human trafficking and nearly 12,000 reports of cases referencing nearly 22,000 potential victims.
Haider’s public defender was not able to be reached for comment.
