Migrant Woman Alleges Rape While Being Smuggled in Arizona Desert

A Salvadoran woman says a Mexican man sexually assaulted her in the Arizona desert after both were smuggled illegally into the U.S. from Mexico. Officials with the Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff’s Department arrested the man.

Following the apprehension of a group of migrants in the Arizona desert, a Salvadoran woman reported being sexually assaulted after crossing the border by a fellow traveler, according to information provided to Breitbart Texas by Tucson Sector Border Patrol officials. The alleged attack took place before Border Patrol agents apprehended the migrants.

“The woman reported the sexual assault to agents who immediately contacted the Pima County Sheriff’s Department,” Tucson Sector officials stated. A spokesman for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department told Breitbart News they arrested the Mexican man and filed state charges of sexual assault as the attack allegedly took place after the group crossed the border into the U.S.

Officials arrested 33-year-old Antonio Cruz-Morales, a Mexican national who illegally entered the U.S., officials reported. The rape of the Salvadoran woman allegedly took place in the desert near Ajo, Arizona. Cruz-Morales is currently in the Pima County jail pending a 15,000 bond.

Breitbart Texas reached out to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials requesting information about Cruz-Morales immigration history. Officials were unable to respond to the request pending further investigation.

Border Patrol officials did not report whether Cruz-Morales is a smuggled migrant or if he has a connection to the human smuggling organization.

The Salvadoran woman is one of an estimated 103,000 migrant women who will be “raped or coerced into sex” this year, according to Princeton Policy Advisors’ President Steven Kopits.

Kopits said, “We estimate 80,000 migrant women were raped or coerced into sex during 2018, rising to 103,000 on higher migrant numbers in 2019,” according to a Breitbart News article by Neil Munro. He said the actual number of incidents “could be up to 50 percent higher.”

In addition, Kopitz estimated that 34,000 would be kidnapped, 21,000 would be placed into forced labor trafficking, and 106,000 would be robbed somewhere in the process.

In 2016, Breitbart Texas reported on rape trees, dead migrants, and other abuses of migrants in the human smuggling process.

Women and young girls from Central America are routinely given birth control or morning-after pills by their mothers in anticipation of the likely sexual assaults that will occur on their illicit journey to the United States, the article reports.

These females are often raped immediately upon making it to their first stop once they arrive in a Mexican stash house from Guatemala. They then are shipped to the U.S.-Mexico border. In the process of making it from the first stash house to the second, the women and young girls are often sexually assaulted or raped again by the smuggler–or group of smugglers–taking them between the two locations. The sexual assaults and rapes often happen again in the second Mexican stash house of their journey.

They are then trickled into the U.S. across the porous border and brought to a third stash house in a U.S. border town, usually in or near McAllen, Texas. They are often sexually assaulted or raped again by the operator of the stash house if they are deemed attractive by the criminals operating the clandestine facility.