EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – An El Paso federal grand jury has indicted two men in connection with an attempt to breach a storm drain near the Rio Grande to smuggle migrants.
The charges stem from an Aug. 4 incident in which U.S. Border Patrol agents responded to a sensor alert in an area commonly utilized by smugglers about 1.5 miles east of the Bridge of the Americas port of entry in El Paso.
The agents allegedly witnessed two men using tools to pry open a grate preventing access to the storm drain system. The men became “combative” when the Border Patrol agents arrived and one tried to flee on foot, but both were apprehended, court records show.
The two men were taken to the Paso del Norte Border Patrol Processing Center and determined to be Mexican citizens illegally present in the United States.
In a post-arrest interview, Javier Esteban Obregon Flores told agents that smugglers in Juarez hired him to carry a backpack with a drill and a hammer and act as a “lookout” once he and another man illegally entered the United States.
Obregon said he and the other man entered the storm drain and that he saw his companion go deeper into the tunnel and then heard a hammer hitting concrete.
Jorge Solis Soto, the other detainee, said he approached a smuggler in Juarez for safe passage into the United States but was short on the $500 smuggling fee, court records show.
Solis allegedly told agents he was offered a discount by the smugglers in exchange for cutting the rebar blocking human access inside the storm drain tunnels. Solis said he was performing the required work to facilitate the future smuggling of migrants when the Border Patrol detained him.
A grand jury on Wednesday charged them both with one count of conspiracy to bring illegal aliens into the United States.
El Paso historian Fred Morales earlier told Border Report that Mexican smugglers have been using storm drains and tunnels since the 1960s to smuggle migrants from Juarez to El Paso. The increased presence of Border Patrol and the placement of heavy grates – such as the ones Solis and Obregon allegedly were tasked with dismantling – greatly cut down the practice in recent years, Morales said.
Border Report in 2023 witnessed a demonstration of how the Border Patrol’s Confined Space Entry Team regularly inspects storm drains near the Rio Grande.
Team members have retrieved bolt cutters, hacksaws, crowbars and other tools from tunnels where migrants who enter are at risk of cuts, abrasions and drowning.
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