5 people charged in stash house network
Officials detail raid that freed migrants
Five people have been taken into custody and charged with federal crimes in connection with a stash house in southwest Houston where more than 90 migrants were found Friday by the Houston Police Department.
A criminal complaint filed Saturday alleges that all five harbored, concealed and shielded immigrants in the country illegally for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain.
Acting U.S. Attorney Jennifer B. Lowery, from the Southern District of Texas, said all of the people charged are in the country illegally.
They are Marina García-Díaz, 22, El Salvador; Henry Licona-Larios, 31, Copan, Honduras; Kevin Licona-López, 25, Santa Barbara, Honduras; Marco Baca-Pérez 30, Michoacán, Mexico; and Marcelo García-Palacios, 21, Oaxaca, Mexico. They had an initial appearance in federal court before U.S. Magistrate Judge Christina Bryan, who appointed public counsel for all of them and called for a preliminary hearing Wednesday.
The investigation began after authorities said they received a call from a woman reporting her brother had been kidnapped.
According to the complaint in the case, HPD received a call Friday about a kidnapping case and met the same day with the caller at a gas station at 3003 Ella Blvd. North of Houston.
The caller reported that she paid $11,000 in February to smugglers to bring her brother from Honduras to the United States. And she told officers that she was instructed by the smugglers, a man and a woman, to drive from Dallas where she resides to Houston. They instructed her to bring
an additional $6,300 to a Walgreens in Houston for her brother to be released, according to the court document.
While driving to Houston, she received a call from a woman who put her brother on the phone to speak briefly. The woman recorded the call, in which her brother repeatedly asked her, “Please help me,” the complaint says.
And she received another call while en route from a male demanding that she must pay the full amount of money they instructed.
The man told her that, otherwise, her brother would be killed. That is when the woman decided to report it to the police, out of fear for the life of her brother, the document says.
She turned over the call recording and cellphone numbers related to the conversations to investigators.
The police obtained an emergency geolocation order and found the location of the smugglers by pinging the cellphone calls they made to the woman who called the police.
Officers found 97 migrants at the house on Chessington Drive in southwest Houston. They were packed in rooms, some with health conditions, dehydrated and almost naked. They were forced to give the smugglers all their possessions and keep only their underwear.
“This is so difficult for me,” said the migrant brother, whom the Chronicle is not identifying for safety concerns. “I have always wanted to help my family and my mother because she lives in a little house that is falling apart.”
“We are very poor,” the migrant said.
He came from a small mountainous villa in Honduras near the Nicaragua border.
He said he initiated the trip to the U.S. with coyotes on March 25 and was smuggled into the house in Houston the weekend before the police operation took place Friday. He said that during the period he was in the stash house, he saw more migrants brought every day as well as some leaving.
Upon their arrival, he said, smugglers seized their phones and asked for the numbers of their families or relatives in the United States. His relation in the country was his sister-in-law, the woman who called the police.
“I am so worried about my family,” he said. “And God say you should pay all your debts. I have to obey God, I have to pay, but all I ask is a chance to work here” in the United States.
The charging documents allege the rooms in the house had deadbolts on the doors facing the outside, which prevented escape. The charges also allege at least one person was told if the money was not paid, he would be put in “four pieces of wood.”
Authorities said several of the captives identified García-Díaz, Licona-Larios, Licona-López, Baca-Pérez and García-Palacios as those conducting the smuggling operation.
If convicted, each faces up to 10 years in federal prison and a possible $250,000 maximum fine.