McALLEN, Texas — A cartel-connected Texas man is accused of kidnapping a 17-year-old female his criminal organization had been hired to smuggle into the country. The man is believed to have raped multiple smuggled women.
On Thursday, deputy U.S. Marshals and FBI agents arrested Ernesto “ El Payaso” Solis in the town of Peñitas, near McAllen on a warrant out of the Eastern District of Virginia, charging him with various counts of kidnapping and extortion. On Friday morning, Solis went before U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Ormsby who ordered that he be held without bond pending another detention hearing. El Payaso is set to eventually be moved to Virginia to stand trial for the various charges.
As part of the federal investigation, authorities learned that Solis would allegedly rape the women that his criminal organization would smuggle, court records obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed.
The case began on November 8, when Nelson Mendoza and his wife Rosibel De Los Angeles Rivas Mendoza contacted the Leesburg Police Department in Virginia about the kidnapping of their daughter. Both parents told detectives that they are illegal immigrants from El Salvador and had made arrangements in El Salvador for the smuggling of their 17-year-old daughter–but the human smugglers had kidnapped their daughter and had been extorting the family for thousands of dollars.
The family paid a total of $7,300 to bring the teenager from El Salvador to Houston, Texas, but was kidnapped in McAllen. The family then reportedly began to receive calls demanding money for the release of the girl.
With the help of Houston Police and phone taps, federal agents were able to track down and rescue the teenager on December 7 and arrest one of the human smugglers identified as Juan Lopez Gonzalez. Based on the information gathered from Lopez’s arrest, authorities were able to track Solis to the rural community of Peñitas.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
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