EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – A California resident is facing federal conspiracy charges after being arrested in New Mexico driving an SUV with six migrants on board.
Border agents monitoring security cameras placed west of Columbus, N.M., on Wednesday watched six individuals come over the border wall from Mexico and run toward a waiting Dodge Durango. Federal court records show the vehicle took off along NM State Road 11 toward Deming – a New Mexico community along Interstate 10.
Two U.S. Border Patrol vehicles intercepted the Durango. Border agents approached the driver and saw several individuals crouched inside the SUV. All the occupants except the driver were Mexican citizens with no authorization to be in the United States.
The agents placed driver Teodoro Ruiz Jr. under arrest. Court records show he agreed to talk to agents without a lawyer present and allegedly volunteered he drove from his home in California to Deming. He said a cousin introduced him to a known smuggler who hired him to drive migrants from the border wall to a stash house in Columbus.
The investigation revealed Ruiz has previous arrests for migrant smuggling in both Indio and Pine Valley, California. A criminal complaint accuses him of conspiring to transport illegal aliens for profit.
The court on Monday appointed a public defender for Ruiz. He faces a detention hearing on Thursday in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico at the federal courthouse in Las Cruces.
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