EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Police in Juarez, Mexico, have arrested two teens they say kept four Jordanian migrants captive for a month, often pointing a loaded shotgun at them.
The arrests took place in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday in a home at the corner of Sanchez and Juarez streets in the Campesina neighborhood of southeast Juarez.
A municipal police report states police officers responded to a 911 call from neighbors concerned about the welfare of people at the home. The report states that the officers approached a window and saw people inside waving their hands at them.
The officers entered the residence and confronted two teenagers, who surrendered despite having a loaded shotgun by their side. Inside a locked room were four adult males, including one with an affectation to his right hand.
The officers took the teens into custody and transported the captives to a police station for medical care. An investigation revealed they were Jordanian nationals presumably being held by smugglers who hired the teenagers to keep watch on them.
The Jordanians were subjected to mistreatment during their 30-day captivity; the teens allegedly participated in such mistreatment by pointing the shotgun at them and making death threats, the report states.
The El Paso-Juarez-Southern New Mexico corridor remains a busy springboard for migrant smuggling despite a sharp decrease in U.S. Border Patrol encounters nationwide since June.
In October, border agents apprehended 10,818 unauthorized migrants in the El Paso Sector, compared to 8,567 in Del Rio, 5,061 in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, 2,370 in Laredo, and only 291 in the Big Bend Sector.
Last month, the bulk of the apprehensions along the entire Southwest border were Mexican nationals (25,402) and citizens from the Northern Triangle of Central America (12,428). But the other 18,700 October apprehensions involved citizens from all over the world.
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