'A dangerous world': What's at stake when Syrian refugees are smuggled to US

For the five Syrian men, the journey halfway around the world began on the internet, where they first made contact with the Barakat organization on Facebook. Elias was 25 years old. The other men were Albeer, 21, Rawad, 21, George, 26, and Alkhateb, the oldest of the group at 42.

Each of the men had a reason to leave Syria immediately. Elias, for example, said Syrian rebel forces had threatened him and demanded money. To show they were serious, they killed his dog.

It's not clear whether the men traveled together for the entire trip. But U.S. officials pieced together the story step by step: From the Facebook page, the men were referred to the Baremoon Travel Agency in Homs, Syria. They paid $350 to $400 to a woman named Lucy for travel from Syria to Beirut, Lebanon, by taxi.

On May 28, 2015, a post on the Facebook page of a man whose full name and biographical details match those of Elias shows a selfie of a young man with close cropped-hair and trim beard posing at the modern, sky-lighted departure lounge of the Beirut International Airport. The man identified as Elias is wearing a purple shirt and black vest, posing with a young woman in a leopard-print top. The caption says, "Traveling to Istanbul, Turkey." Alongside the picture, friends posted more than 80 encouraging messages in Arabic, including "Good luck guys," and "God be with you brother."

The flight from Beirut to Istanbul is less than two hours. But once in Turkey, the men hit some kind of delay. In Istanbul, two of the men waited for more than 30 days before making contact at a coffee shop in the Aksaray neighborhood — a Syrian expat district in Istanbul crowded with refugees escaping the war and known as a major hub for sex trafficking.

At the coffee shop, the men met with a smuggler, Abu, who would arrange travel from Istanbul to the United States. They described Abu as in his 30s, thin, balding, and about 5-feet-10. Abu's services did not come cheap. Two of the Syrian men said they paid him $15,000 for travel to the United States, a package deal including phony passports, airline tickets, guides in each country, food and transportation. It was a surprisingly businesslike operation: Abu even offered a grace period for the Syrians to obtain a refund if they didn't make it to the United States within a certain time.

It's not clear how the Syrians were able to afford such steep fees. One man said he had saved the money over three years. Another said his family sold land and property to raise funds. He also received $3,000 in a wire transfer initiated by a person in Burbank, California.

Wherever it came from, the money was good enough for Abu. He gave the travelling Syrians their documents: airline tickets and phony passports from Israel. The travel papers would now identify two of the men under the false Israeli names "Miller Idan" and "Halam Rotem."

Source: 'A dangerous world': What's at stake when Syrian refugees are smuggled to US