Houston Teacher Charged with Smuggling Migrants near Border in Texas

HOUSTON, Texas — A Houston Independent School District teacher is facing multiple felony charges related to an incident near the Texas border where police say he attempted to smuggle four migrants into the U.S. interior. Police in Kinney County say they stopped Brandon Alexis Gracia for a traffic violation near Eagle Pass, Texas, early last week and found migrants attempting to hide inside the vehicle.

Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe told Fox 26 Houston that police stopped Gracia for a traffic violation near the Mexican border in Eagle Pass. Inside the vehicle police found four people ducking down to try and avoid detection. Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents arrived and identified the four people — two men and two women — as migrants who were illegally present in the United States, Coe stated.

“The individuals were in the backseat laying down trying to conceal themselves,” Sheriff Coe explained.

During processing, deputies from the Kenny County Sheriff’s Office found an identification card from Patrick Henry Middle School, Fox 26 reported. Houston Federation of Teachers Union officials confirmed to the local Fox affiliate that Gracia worked in HISD but was not a member of the union. HISD also confirmed the human smuggling suspect’s employment as a teacher.

“What we’re gathering is he was contacted on social media, wanted to make some quick money, came to the border and picked up at a pre-determined location, and was headed back to Houston,” the Texas border county sheriff explained. He said smuggling groups make promises of payments between $1,000 and $5,000 per person smuggled. He said the payments are often not paid.

Fox 26 reported:

“He’s looking at state jail time. He could get up to six to eight years for all this. Best I can tell this is his first time. We are catching some that have no criminal history, never been in trouble before in their life, and they’ve hit a point in life where they think they need money bad enough that they’re going to try this. So we need to turn the economy around. We need to educate people, and we need to find the source,” Sheriff Coe adds.

He says last year alone his deputies arrested 741 people who were treating other people as cargo, and smuggling them into the U.S. for money.

“The year prior to that was 169, and we thought we had really put a dent in it. Then 2022 came around and showed us how wrong we were,” explains the sheriff who says some smugglers believe they’re helping non-U.S. residents out of a bad situation, but he points out once the immigrants are out of that person’s vehicle, and out of their possession, they often end up trafficked and in worse situations than they were originally escaping.

A high percentage of human smuggling drivers arrested in Kinney County are from the Houston area, Sheriff Coe told Fox 26 earlier this month. The sheriff said that of the nearly 100 people arrested on human smuggling charges in February, 40 percent came from the Houston area. He again blamed social media recruitment.

In March, Breitbart Texas interviewed Governor Greg Abbott regarding human smuggling from the Texas border into the U.S. interior.

“To me, this is shocking,” Abbott began in the interview.” Texans are going on to Twitter or Tik Tok or whatever the case may be, and seeing advertisements by the cartels offering to pay them money to pick up illegal immigrants and transport them elsewhere in the state of Texas.”

“And that’s a crime,” the governor continued. “But either it’s not being enforced or the punishment is not serious enough. So I want to mandatory ten years behind bars for anyone who is caught smuggling somebody in Texas.”

During his State-of-the-State address in February, Governor Abbott made securing the border an emergency item. The designation allows the Texas Legislature to prioritize bills related to this and pass them more quickly. The governor asked the legislature to create a ten-year-minimum sentence for anyone caught smuggling in Texas. He also asked the Legislature to enhance the penalty for operating stash houses to a third-degree felony.

Finally, if human smuggling or stash house operations occur in an area under a disaster declaration, the governor asked for enhanced penalties.