Laredo Sector Border Patrol agents disrupted 12 human smuggling stash house operations during a ten-day period ending August 27. The raids on the stash houses led to the arrest of 229 migrants.
Officials report the last incident of this series of raids occurred on August 27 when Laredo South Station Border Patrol agents and Laredo Police Department officers began surveillance on a suspected human smuggling stash house on Juarez Avenue in the city of Laredo, Texas. While watching the house, a Laredo police officer observed a person sneaking through a hole in the fence to gain access to the house. The officers detained the man and Border Patrol agents conducted an immigration interview, according to information obtained from Laredo Sector Border Patrol officials.
The agents determined the intercepted man to be a Mexican national illegally present in the U.S. They arrested the man for an immigration violation.
The LPD officers then conducted a welfare check on the residence located in a well-known human smuggling area of the city.
After making entry into the home, Border Patrol agents found 20 people packed into the home. “None were wearing any personal protective equipment,” Laredo Sector officials said in a written statement. The agents conducted immigration interviews and identified all 20 as illegal aliens from Mexico and Guatemala. The agents took all 20 into custody pending further investigation.
Laredo Sector Chief Patrol Agent Matthew J. Hudak stated, “Over the past ten days, Laredo Sector agents and our partners have encountered and arrested 229 aliens in 12 stash houses within the City of Laredo. As the number of illegal aliens testing positive for COVID-19 increases, these stash houses represent an increasingly significant threat to our agents, to public health, and to our health care system and our health care professionals.”
Breitbart Texas’ Jaeson Jones reported that more than 160 cartel-connected human smuggling stash houses have been busted by Border Patrol agents in South Texas since the beginning of the current fiscal year in October 2019.
Jones reported:
Human smuggling networks routinely treat migrants as a commodity. As seen in this video posted on August 12th, 2020 by Commissioner Morgan where you get to see a video recorded by a smuggler having no concern for human beings in terrible conditions.
Human smugglers often commit the crimes of human trafficking as well. As migrants are being smuggled it is common for smugglers to take advantage of them through force, fraud, and coercion. The smugglers also subject migrants to forced sex, labor, and indentured servitude. These crimes are routinely discussed by Commission Mark Morgan at his monthly meetings with the press from the Reagan building in Washington.
Breitbart Texas regularly reports on a case-by-case basis about the efforts by Border Patrol agents along with state and local law enforcement officers to disrupt and shut down these cartel-connected human smuggling operations carried out on U.S. soil.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.