FROM MEX-OWNED NEW YORK TIMES –MOUTHPIECE FOR LA RAZA
PROPAGANDA
May 26, 2012
For Many Illegal Entrants Into U.S., a
Particularly Inhospitable First Stop
EDINBURG, Tex. — For
decades, the first stop for illegal immigrants making their way across the
Texas border has often been a stash house or drop house, an apartment or rental
home where they might spend hours or days in squalor waiting to be transported
elsewhere. Often it is where they are held until their families pay the
smugglers’ fees.
But in recent months, stash houses have proliferated in border
towns in the Rio Grande Valley and in cities farther north, like Houston, a
trend that has been occurring in Texas but not in other states on the border.
And local, state and
federal authorities in Texas say these houses are becoming increasingly
overcrowded, with smugglers packing in dozens of people and treating the
occupants not so much like customers but prisoners whom they starve, beat or
rape.
In this South Texas town
this month, as the police approached a house and a trailer on a dead-end dirt
road, illegal immigrants scattered and fled. But those inside a third residence
— a two-bedroom house made of white-painted cinder block, no more than 800 to
1,000 square feet — could not escape, because of chains on the doors and
security bars on the windows.
There was no
air-conditioning, no electricity. A total of about 115 men and women were being
held at the property, but the largest group — at least 50, perhaps more — were
locked in the cinder block house. A few of them told investigators that they
had been warned they would be killed or beaten if they did not remain quiet.
Some had not been fed in days.
One of two men who
subsequently pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiracy to harbor aliens,
Marcial Salas-Garduino, 23, greeted newcomers to the house the same way,
according to court documents.
“Welcome to hell,” he told
them.
Fourteen miles away, in a
rural area near the town of Alton, 33 immigrants were found in a
400-square-foot house in March. The man who ran it gave them two eggs and three
tortillas once a day and forbade them to go outside.
In March and April, the
authorities discovered 32 people crowded into a trailer in Edinburg, 49 in a
three-bedroom house in Houston, about 60 in a house in Brownsville and 60
others in a three-bedroom residence in McAllen.
“We were used to
encountering 10 to 15 people per stash house in the past,” said Enrique Sotelo,
the Alton police chief. “Now we are not surprised when we see 40 to 75 people
crammed into small two- or three-bedroom houses.”
Overcrowding has become
routine in stash houses, where there is often no furniture and people sleep on
the floor. Chief Sotelo said he had been in stash houses where people were
packed so tight that some slept sitting up, leaning against the walls. Border Patrol agents in
South Texas have not only raided more stash houses this year than they did last
year, they have also found substantially higher numbers of people inside them.
In the federal Customs and
Border Protection’s Rio Grande Valley sector — a large area of Southeast Texas
that includes Edinburg, Brownsville and McAllen — more than 2,000 illegal
immigrants have been apprehended this fiscal year in nearly 80 stash houses, up
from 1,012 in 69 stash houses in the entire 2011 fiscal year.
“You’ve got people stacked
on top of people,” said Jerry Robinette, special agent in charge with
Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Antonio. “When you have a
two-bedroom house that’s made for a family of 4 or 6 and you have 30 or 40
people in there, you can imagine how things can escalate in that kind of an
environment.”
Occupants of stash houses
in Texas have been sexually assaulted, denied food or water, forced to work for
their captors and tortured. One of the 21 people found at a stash house last
year in Edinburg told investigators that the man in charge had hit him with a
baseball bat because the occupants connected the refrigerator after being told
not to.
Smugglers often hold the
immigrants as ransom to extort more money from their families. Even those who
are not being used for extortion are held captive to avoid detection by
neighbors and to prevent the loss of money that would result if they escaped
before all the fees were paid.
The rise of stash houses in Texas comes as an opposite trend
unfolds in parts of Southern California and Arizona, where such activity has
declined in recent years. The Phoenix area was once known as the drop house
capital of America, but no longer — federal agents discovered 805 immigrants in
51 homes there last fiscal year, down from 3,221 people in 186 homes in the
2008 fiscal year.
Law enforcement officials
said the reason behind the trend was unclear.
Some said that while the
authorities in Arizona had been focused on drop houses for years — federal
agents in the Phoenix area helped reduce the number after forming a drop house
task force in 2009 — those in Texas were now detecting more of them in part
through improved coordination and increased enforcement.
Others said the smugglers
operating in Texas appeared to be doing whatever they could to increase their
profits at a time when illegal immigration into the United States at the
Mexican border has slowed.
“I can only guess that at
this point it’s more economical for them to keep people in one house,” said
Sean McElroy, deputy special agent in charge with Immigration and Customs
Enforcement in Houston. “I think they’re just trying something different.
They’re definitely feeling a lot of pressure.”
And as
human smuggling across the border has become dominated by Mexican drug cartels,
the treatment of those inside the stash houses has worsened. “The detection and
apprehension of illegal aliens right now is becoming more like a rescue
operation,” said Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public
Safety.
These days, the first phone
calls or tips that lead the authorities to the houses often come from those
locked inside or from their relatives. In Edinburg, a town of 77,000 about 16
miles from the border, neighbors said they never saw or heard large numbers of
people inside the cinder block house. The police were summoned by a 911 call made
by a Spanish-speaking man who was locked inside.
In a hushed voice, he asked
the dispatcher to send help.
Michelle O’Donnell
contributed reporting from Houston.
*
WILL MEXICO’S INVASION, OCCUPATION AND EVER EXPANDING
WELFARE STATE IN OUR BORDERS BANKRUPT AMERICA?
MEXICANS ARE VOTING IN DROVES TO MAKE THAT HAPPEN.
MEXIFORNIA IS A STATE BANKRUPTED AND LOOTED BY LA RAZA!
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