EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Police in Juarez detained two smugglers and freed 121 Central and South American migrants from illegal safe houses during the weekend.
The arrests came first. Two men only identified as Kevin Coster G. T., 25, and Juan Isidro G. C., 43, were taken into custody Saturday in South Juarez while allegedly offering to illegally cross migrants into the United States for money, according to the Chihuahua state police.
Police seized $300 and a Chevrolet Cruze that the alleged smugglers used to transport migrants to the border.
A day later, the municipal police raided a home near the Los Aztecas neighborhood where they found 112 migrants in overcrowded conditions.
Police said the migrants could barely move inside the three-room cinder-block structure built on the side of a hill. The migrants were taken to a temporary shelter inside the Kiki Romero Gym in Central Juarez.
Later that day, the state police raided a home less than 2 miles from the Zaragoza International Bridge where they found nine additional migrants locked up inside. The state police have told Border Report the migrants are little more than prisoners to the smugglers, who forbid them from going out, give them very little food, if any, and don’t tell them exactly when they’ll try to cross them into the United States.
So far this calendar year, Juarez municipal and state police have come across nearly a dozen migrant safe houses and transported more than 1,000 international citizens to the Kiki Romero Gym.