Federal authorities detained two illegal aliens and one U.S. citizen on Monday after a California Highway Patrol officer pulled over a suspicious brown delivery truck and found it to be stuffed with 77 profusely sweating illegal aliens, including five children.
The brown truck, which had the appearance of a UPS truck, had no tags and was weaving down Old Highway 80 in San Diego when the officer noticed it and performed a traffic stop. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that a U.S. Border Patrol agent who was passing by stopped to offer assistance to the officer.
The agent noticed the truck was riding very low. He noticed fresh paint on the truck and could smell a mix of body odor and a commonly used Mexican soap, according to the report, which cited court documents filed in San Diego federal court on Tuesday.
The driver, U.S. citizen Shawn Lee Seiler, allegedly told authorities that he was the truck’s owner and consented to a search of the vehicle. Upon opening the back doors of the truck, the agent discovered 77 illegal aliens, sweating profusely. San Diego has been experiencing warm winter weather in recent days — more than ten degrees above average, according to local NBC 7.
Seiler reportedly admitted that he is a human smuggler. The complaint stated that he told investigators that he originally expected to be trafficking 50 illegal aliens and that he would be paid $100 dollars a head, which would mean a $5,000 payout. Instead, 77 were stuffed into the vehicle.
Seiler was arrested for transporting illegal aliens for financial gain. Two of the 77 illegal aliens were detained and will be charged, as they had prior deportations, one on January 9 through San Ysidro and the other on May 14, 2015 at El Paso according to the Union-Tribune. The remaining 75 foreign nationals were detained as material witnesses in the case.
In a similar case, Border Patrol agents in South Texas caught a human smuggler trying to sneak 22 illegal aliens in a tractor-trailer through the Falfurrias Border Patrol Checkpoint on December 31, according to reporting by Breitbart Texas.
Last October, a truck driver pleaded guilty to “Transporting Undocumented Aliens Resulting in Death” after transporting around 200 illegal aliens in his tractor-trailer in Texas. Ten of those, locked for hours in the trailer, died in the severe Texas heat.
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana
Photo: file
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