Treated ‘like animals’: Immigrants offer look inside smuggling operation
At 2 a.m. Friday, Ilden López just wanted to get out.
His legs were cramped in the back of a pickup. His body was sore from a “hellish journey” that began 25 days earlier in Jalapa, Guatemala, with a promise to his wife that he would do anything in this world to lift her and their two young children out of poverty.
Arriving at a two-story home in southwest Houston last week was the closest he came to that dream. He and 15 other migrants were ushered from the double cab truck, where some were hidden under plywood in the bed and others packed in the cabin.
Just after 9 a.m., a Houston Police Department SWAT team swarmed the property in response to a kidnapping call, only to uncover a possible smuggling operation. Some of the 90 migrants found huddled inside the house told the Houston Chronicle their stories of escaping their homelands only to end up sick, starving and held for ransom in Houston.
Rogelio Mendoza, an immigrant from Hidalgo, Mexico, said he was terrified when police stormed in.
“We were in a room on the sec
ond floor with like 40 people, kind of dark because the windows were closed,” said Mendoza. “All of a sudden, we heard a loudspeaker and they were saying, ‘This is the police, the house is surrounded, come out with your hands up,’” he said. “We were really scared, but nobody moved. We didn’t know what to do.”
López, who had fallen asleep kneeling in the only small space he could find on the first floor, remembers hearing the loudspeaker repeating the message. Shortly after, the police broke through the front door.
“My heart was pounding. I thought they were going to abuse us and treat us like animals like the other people did,” said López. “I thought I was going to be with my cousin soon here in America, and now this!”
This was the third investigation of a migrant smuggling operation inside a Houston home in recent months.
In January, police investigated a possible human smuggling operation involving two dozen people held captive in roughly the same area of southwest Houston.
Late last year, also in a nearby neighborhood, police found more than two dozen people inside a residence after a man escaped the home in his underwear. Federal officials charged a Honduran man in that case.
The discoveries of these socalled stash houses, where migrants are often held until they can be transported elsewhere, illustrates how for decades Houston has served as a hub for smugglers. The flow of immigrants into the city could increase in the coming months with the ongoing surge at the border.
Under the Biden administration, border apprehension reached a record of more than 170,000 in March. Those who make it across face continued danger, including trafficking and exploitation.
To Lopez’s surprise, the dozens of officers who occupied the premise “were very good with us.”
He said officers brought pizza for the immigrants, many of whom hadn’t eaten much in days. “That was the first meal I had in three days,” López said.
Patricia Cantú, assistant chief of the HPD, said the officers bought pizzas from their own pockets after seeing the “deplorable conditions” in which the migrants were found. She said they were stripped of their possessions so they would not escape, including their shoes. By Saturday morning, five have been taken to a hospital, possibly with COVID-19 complications, and five more tested positive for the virus but showing mild to no symptoms.
Cantú, who is a bilingual officer, noted that most of the immigrants she spoke to were from Guatemala and Honduras.
There were people from Mexico and other countries as well. Luis Sevilla, another migrant interviewed by the Chronicle, is one of them, from the state of Hidalgo.
Sevilla said all the men were ordered to get naked as soon as they entered the house in the 12200 block of Chessington Drive, allowed to keep only their underwear. “They didn’t allow us to keep our phones or anything at all,” he said. “My family hasn’t heard from me in many days. They probably think that I am dead.”
Women were allowed to keep part of their clothing. But they were forced to take showers in bathrooms filled with men, as every space was occupied. Some of the immigrants would rotate sitting, while others had to stand.
Lines to take a shower were long, said Mendoza. “We were so ashamed to be there when a woman was showering that we would look the other way, turn around,” he said. “We tried to give them some privacy, but imagine, it was impossible.”
Food was served usually once a day. “It was always a little bit of rice, beans and tortilla,” Sevilla said. “If we asked a bit more, they told us to not complain. They said it was ‘enough to kill the hunger.’ They said they were not there to feed us.”
Several immigrants said they would only see one or two people in charge of the house, but they didn’t know if there were more. Their rooms were locked from the outside so they wouldn’t know what was happening outside their spaces. They never heard the names of the people in charge.
The immigrants said that, to keep them quiet and submissive, they were told that they would be fined if they did not obey. Fines were $500 or $ 1,000, depending on the infraction, such as not keeping quiet after being reprimanded. And that would be more money their loved ones would have to pay.
Also, they increased the amounts their U.S. contacts had to pay from what was originally agreed.
“He said he didn’t care what we were told before,” said one of the immigrants. “That we were here and here we do what he said if we wanted to get out.”
Those coming from Mexico typically paid $2,700 to smugglers in McAllen for “el brinco,” as they call the fee just for crossing the river.
In Houston, they were supposed to pay $2,300 to complete the total agreed price of $5,000. Instead, they were told that they owed now $5,000 on top of what they paid.
The same happened with immigrants coming from Central America. Some of them said their prices were arbitrarily increased by $2,000 on average on top of more than $10,000 they had already paid.
Houston was supposed to be their final destination with the smugglers. Their families or relatives in the U.S. who lived in other cities were responsible for picking them up or arranging the final leg of their trip.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen to us now,” said one of the immigrants now in the custody of authorities. “Please, I beg you, help me find a job. I just want to help my family. I give my life for them. I can work in construction, in the fields, as a bricklayer’s assistant, in anything.”
Others cried thinking about their families left behind and the enormous debts they will have to pay.
“We feel so unlucky, so exhausted, so disappointed,” said Mendoza, who left his wife and two small children back in Mexico.
“We were so close to reaching our destination and then, work as hard as we could. That’s it . ... We were almost there,” he said, covering his eyes.