Sheriff’s deputies in south Texas disrupted a human smuggling operation, transporting 26 migrants from a secret trailer compartment to a stash house outside San Antonio.
A dozen migrants were hospitalized with life-threatening circumstances, but all are expected to survive, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Department announced Thursday.
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The sheriff’s department received a tip early Thursday, alerting them to the human-smuggling operation.
Deputies arrived on the scene as migrants were being carried from a trailer to the stash house.
According to Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar, the trailer has a secret compartment made of “real hard mesh” in which the migrants lay for roughly three hours while being carried from the southern border to the stash house in intense heat and humidity.
He described the stash home as more of a shanty, with no air conditioning and buckets for the migrants to use as toilets.
“I don’t even see any source for drinking water,” Salazar remarked. “There are miserable conditions there, and it’s just blazing hot in there.”
When they discovered the migrants, the outside temperature was in the 90s.
On Thursday, authorities arrested seven people, and by Friday, all but one of the migrants had left the hospital.
The charges against three defendants include people trafficking, operating a stash house, and evading arrest.
The migrants traveled from Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela, and Guatemala.
They were carried to the stash house by a tractor-trailer, which was followed by a driver in a pickup truck.
Salzar reported that one migrant paid the smugglers $16,000 in US money.
He claimed they discovered bulletproof vests and guns while examining the property.
The halt comes nearly two years after 53 migrants, including eight children, perished when confined inside a trailer with a faulty air conditioner.
It is the nation’s most lethal human-smuggling crime.
Since 2021, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard have conducted over 513,100 “illegal immigrant apprehensions” and more than 43,700 arrests under Operation Lone Star, according to Gov. Greg Abbott.
