Two asylum seekers from El Salvador were charged late Tuesday in a plot to transport two people who had illegally entered California from Mexico further into the country, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of California.
The married couple, Edy Giovanni Fuentes-Alvarado and Kenia Yamileth Gomez-Caballero, each face 10 years in prison for allegedly trying to pick up Fuentes-Alvarado’s cousin and a second person eight miles north of the border.
U.S. Border Patrol agents stationed at a highway checkpoint 20 miles southeast of San Diego, Calif., intercepted the 37-year-old man and 36-year-old woman Monday afternoon when they were forced to proceed through a Border Patrol-operated immigration checkpoint on Route 94, the federal complaint stated.
The Customs and Border Protection agency sets up checkpoints on highways near the border and sometimes 50 miles north of it to look over vehicles that might have picked up narcotics or people who illegally crossed from Mexico and were then picked up by a smuggler.
The couple told Border Patrol agents at the checkpoint they were citizens of El Salvador but were in the country because they had an asylum case pending. They were then arrested, along with the two other people, according to the news release.
Assistant U. S. Attorney Kareem Salem is prosecuting the case.
