They put them in the back of these 18 wheelers and of course with our weather down here, we’ve had some instances where they don’t make it to their final destination.” And they don’t have any respect for human life. They don’t see them as humans, they see them as a commodity. “These organizations … they don’t treat them as humans. And then they take them across in the ranch lands or they’ll put them in tractor trailers to try to smuggle them through the checkpoint,” Guerra said. “So they’ll take them from those stash houses and they’ll run them up, as close as they can get to the checkpoint. Often, those who are smuggled across the border need to then be smuggled around the highway checkpoint about 70 miles north, in Brooks County, especially as many are heading to Houston, San Antonio, or Dallas. And we’re having to go out there and pick up the slack because our federal partners are tied up doing what they’re doing on the border,” Guerra said. “A lot of these stash houses that we’re seeing now are the results of our community calling law enforcement. He said, in the past, his deputies, along with Border Patrol, have dismantled up to three stash houses a day. His county shares 78 miles of international border with Mexico.īorder Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley, in which Hidalgo sits, has already apprehended more than 173,000 illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico in the past seven months more than 101,000 of whom are individuals within a family unit.īorder Patrol is so busy dealing with the humanitarian side of the illegal crossings, “they’re being taken away from intelligence gathering where these stash houses are,” Guerra said on April 30. In Hidalgo County, Texas, Sheriff Eddie Guerra is at the frontline of the border crossing surge. “When you look at alien smuggling in general … it’s an illicit travel agency, is what it is,” Staton said. The majority of those being housed in stash houses are single males, who would be prosecuted and deported if caught by Border Patrol, and those with criminal records, who try to avoid law enforcement altogether. Staton said the case is ongoing as investigators continue to go after the smuggling networks involved. “That was one of the most horrific structures I’ve seen since I’ve been doing this job-and I’ve been doing border security and enforcement for over 24 years.” A stash house containing 67 illegal aliens in Dexter, N.M. “The organization had taken their shoes off of them, so if they went outside, they wouldn’t run away because they’re just running across the desert now with no shoes on. In order to even use the restroom, they had to go outside,” Staton said on May 7. They did have a bathroom in there, but the bathroom didn’t work.
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“So there’s no room for them to even move. The structure was an unfurnished, 20-foot by 20-foot wooden addition to a travel trailer. In February, Staton’s team dismantled a stash house in Dexter, New Mexico, that housed 67 illegal aliens from Guatemala and Ecuador-six of whom were unaccompanied teenagers.
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We’re now seeing houses that camp 54 people, 67 people,” he said. “I’m just going to throw a random number out. Now, along with the dramatic surge in human smuggling, there is an increase in the number of people who smugglers squeeze into stash houses, “especially since the family migration has been coming up,” said Jack Staton, special agent-in-charge of El Paso’s ICE Homeland Security Investigations. EL PASO, Texas-Stash houses have been used for decades to hold humans and contraband on both sides of the southwest border, ready for transportation.