EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Two Mexican migrants are facing federal charges for allegedly agreeing to drive 11 other unauthorized non-citizens through a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint last week.
Tuesday’s arrest of Antonio Ordaz Garcia and Manuel Olivares Rodriguez on a highway west of Las Cruces, New Mexico, is part of a trend of smuggling organizations recruiting those under their care for dangerous tasks that could also land them in jail, federal officials said.
The arrest happened after an agent with the Border Patrol’s Anti-Smuggling Unit spotted a suspicious vehicle on NM State Road 26 near a checkpoint on Interstate 10. The agent noticed the red Chevrolet Avalanche extended cab pickup with its rear heavily laden. The agent approached the vehicle from the back and witnessed the driver begin to drive erratically.
Court records show the vehicle accelerated and decelerated randomly, so the agent called for backup and sped ahead of the Avalanche to set up a tire-deflation device. Records show the driver later identified as Ordaz stopped short of the device and surrendered to a second agent in pursuit.
Ordaz and Olivares, who rode in the front passenger seat, along with 11 other unauthorized migrants in the back seat and on the bed of the pickup, were apprehended and taken to a Border Patrol station.
The two men allegedly told investigators they were recruited at a stash house in Vado, New Mexico, by the Mexican criminal organization that smuggled them into the U.S. to transport their peers to the interior of the country. In exchange, the criminal organization would waive its smuggling fee, court records show.
Olivares told investigators his job was to be in constant communication with smugglers in Juarez, Mexico, through a telephone social media app; Ordaz said he drove through the highway checkpoint in Las Cruces without being stopped or inspected and was willing to not yield if prompted to stop by the Border Patrol but changed his mind at the last minute.
The two men face charges of conspiracy to transport illegal aliens.
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