LAREDO, Texas — Federal law enforcement officers in south-central Texas are busting “stash houses” that smugglers use to hold illegal immigrants who have just crossed the border and are catching adults hidden inside tractor-trailers headed deep into the United States.
While in other parts of the U.S.-Mexico border, children and families make up more than half of those being encountered at the border, adults make up 94% of all illegal entries in the Laredo region. Just 2% of the 52,000 people encountered at the border in approximately the past six months were families, and 4% were children without parents.
“The other places you see a lot of families, but here it’s more on the criminal side,” Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz, a Democrat, told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “Laredo is relatively safe. It is. But if we don’t correct this stash house and tractor-trailers activity that we have with these folks, this could escalate and possibly become a war zone … between rival gangs.”
BORDER PATROL HAS RELEASED 30,000 DIRECTLY INTO THE US SINCE JANUARY
Whereas families and children coming across the border without permission seek out and surrender to agents, single adults sneaking in near Laredo are determined to evade arrest and rely on smugglers to get them over the border and then into a “stash house.” These houses or apartments will often hold 50 to 100 people for days to weeks as the smugglers plan out how to transport them to the destination of their choice deeper within the country. Oftentimes, they use tractor-trailers.
Since October, Laredo has had a 400% increase in stash house busts compared to the same period last year. Some of the people inside the houses have criminal records, Saenz said, which is one reason they do not want to get caught by police while getting across the border.
Law enforcement has arrested 3,900 people around Laredo who were being smuggled into the country via tractor-trailers trucks. It is a 120% increase from the same time a year ago.
The numbers are prompting concern in the city because they mean the cartels are expanding operations within the community and growing their network. Cartels, or massive gangs that make money through corruption and illegal activity, are constantly in a fight with one another to make more money and control their territory. When one cartel is doing well, they become a target to another who wants to outperform them.
“These local gangs that we have here — it’s an extension of these Mexican cartels working through these local gangs that we have,” said Saenz. “We’ve had a stash house surge. If we don’t get to it now, it will only escalate.”
Laredo has seen a “significant proliferation” of stash houses in the past six months, and arrests of illegal immigrant adults have also risen, an indicator that many are getting past Border Patrol agents. Last week, federal police arrested 11 Mexican mafia members, and in another incident, gunfire erupted at one house.
Saenz said the region needs more Border Patrol agents because between 30% and 50% of the agents assigned to Laredo have been pulled to the Rio Grande Valley to help with its rising number of children and families coming into custody. That, in turn, leaves the border in Laredo less defended.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The Texas government, in fiscal year 2021, funded an anti-gang unit to investigate and go after the transnational criminal organizations behind the stash houses and smuggling efforts.
