Border Patrol agents found more than 70 undocumented immigrants detained in a “hide place” in Laredo, Texas, within 24 hours earlier this week.
According to information released by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Thursday, the Laredo Department Border Patrol officer discovered the first hiding place on Monday night after receiving a prompt from the Laredo Police Department. After entering the site, agents found 40 immigrants from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. On Tuesday afternoon, more than 30 immigrants from the same country were found in the second hiding place.
A hideout is a place used by human smugglers to temporarily shelter migrants who have been smuggled across the border-usually in cramped places, sometimes in harsh and potentially life-threatening conditions. The migrants discovered this week underwent medical examinations and provided personal protective equipment while being processed and detained.
“The use of hiding places by criminal organizations continues to pose a threat to national security and our country’s citizens, but they also pose a danger to the people they exploit because they hide them in dilapidated close quarters,” CBP said.
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Last week, border agents in the El Paso area of Texas discovered two separate hideouts containing 65 immigrants from Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua and El Salvador.Gloria I. Chavez, Chief Patrol Agent of the El Paso Department, told Albuquerque daily The hiding place was discovered to “attack the human smuggling activities of transnational criminal organizations in our region.”
Chavez said: “We will continue to work with other agencies to rescue these immigrants from the harsh living conditions of long-term detention.”
According to the policies issued by the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, all single adult immigrants found in El Paso were quickly deported to Mexico. This policy allows to expedite the expulsion of those who “increased serious risk” to introduce an infectious disease into the United States. “
The immediate future of the immigrants detained in Laredo is unclear, although there may be a similar fate. Some regular hiding places were found in Laredo. According to CBP, 103 of the 397 hideouts found in the United States between October 2019 and October 2020 were found in border cities.
“[Human smugglers will] Store them in one of the storage rooms for a few days until enough people are put in the tractor trailer, and then they are locked so that they cannot escape the brutal heat of South Texas,” Chief Patrol Agent Matthew Matthew Hudak said Laredo hid the house in a statement earlier this year.
“When we opened these containers, the temperature was over 105 degrees, there was no ventilation, no personal protective equipment such as masks, and no water,” he added. “This is a tragedy.”
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