Texas Border Business
EL PASO, Texas – El Paso Sector U.S. Border Patrol Agents disrupted three human smuggling stash houses last Friday, encountering 103 migrants.
On Friday, July 14 at 9:50 a.m., El Paso Sector Integrated Targeting Team, Special Operations Detachment, El Paso Sector Anti-Smuggling Unit, Santa Teresa Station Anti-Smuggling Unit, Texas Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security Investigations led an operation that rescued 59 migrants. This law enforcement agency alliance received information from previous smuggling attempts that indicated multiple migrants were being harbored in several small apartment complexes near Diana Drive in northeast El Paso.
The migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, Ecuador, Mexico and Honduras were hidden inside the small properties. All migrants including three accompanied children were medically evaluated and processed accordingly. Three other individuals from Mexico were arrested in this encounter are pending prosecution on human smuggling charges.
Later the same day, at 11:40 a.m., agents assigned to the Ysleta Station Anti-Smuggling Unit received information from the El Paso Sector Intelligence Unit that several rooms were being utilized to house migrants at a motel located in east El Paso near Lomaland Drive. As a result, agents discovered 31 smuggled migrants, inside four rooms, on the property. Migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Honduras and Colombia, including a 5-year-old accompanied child, were found in good health.
And at 5:30 p.m., El Paso Station Agents responded to an El Paso County Sheriff’s Office call at a house near Alabama street where they discovered a total of 13 smuggled migrants. The agents were guided to the stash house by information given by EPSO who were serving a narcotics warrant on the property. Although no drugs were found in the place, agents discovered migrants from Mexico who were in the United States illegally.
All migrants were medically screened and evaluated. Those migrants amenable to Title 42 were expelled back to Mexico and others transported to the Central Processing Center to be processed under Title 8.
“Sheltering migrants in unsanitary and unsafe conditions is a common practice by Transnational Criminal Organizations that disregard the safety of the migrants they exploit,” said El Paso Sector Chief Patrol Agent Gloria I. Chavez. “We appreciate the assistance we receive from the public and our law enforcement partners in disrupting these criminal smuggling organizations.”
During Fiscal Year 2022, Border Patrol Agents in El Paso Sector have located more than 175 stash houses, leading to the rescue or interception of 1,975 migrants.
