MIAMI — The federal trial over smuggling Cuban players to the U.S. has revealed that officials with the U.S. government and Major League Baseball missed a lot of red flags regarding how the athletes came to America.
Hundreds of documents shown to jurors in the first week of the trial of sports agent Bartolo Hernandez and baseball trainer Julio Estrada contain what prosecutors say are falsehoods and deceptions intended to illegally speed up the process. They are charged with conspiracy and alien smuggling and face potentially lengthy prison sentences.
A State Department agent, Bryan Baer, testified Thursday that officials depend on the reliability of these documents to allow Cuban players into the U.