Thread: 2 indicted in Edinburg 'Hell' stash-house case - 115 illegal immigrants

2 indicted in Edinburg 'Hell' stash-house case

May 15, 2012 7:07 PM

Jared Taylor
The Monitor



More than 100 illegal immigrants were rescued Wednesday morning, May 2, 2012, from a set of stash houses in the 2800 block of East University Drive in Edinburg. A call from one of the trapped immigrants brought police to the houses to find them locked from the outside.

McALLEN — A grand jury Tuesday indicted two Honduran nationals accused of operating several stash houses in Edinburg, where authorities this month uncovered 115 illegal immigrants, some who claimed to have been held without food or water for days. The indictment accuses Vicente Ortiz Soto and Marcial Salas Gardunio, both 24-year-old Mexican nationals, with conspiracy to harbor aliens and alien harboring, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston said in a news release.

Edinburg police responded to a 9-1-1 call from a house along East University Drive, where an illegal immigrant claimed he and dozens of others had been held against their will without food or water.
Several immigrants scattered when police arrived at the scene and cut through chains that locked one of three stash houses with dozens of immigrants inside. The rental houses were at the end of a dirt lane secluded from the highway.

A Honduran national told an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent that Salas greeted him and other new guests by saying “Welcome to Hell,” and would give them little food, a criminal complaint states.

Salas told investigators that Ortiz paid him $500 per week to draft ledgers and track the immigrants, as well as feed and transport them, the complaint states.

The immigrants stashed at the property came from Mexico and Central and South America. Several people received medical treatment after authorities freed them from the locked house.

If convicted, Ortiz and Salas each face up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines on each count. No trial date in the case has been set.
More than 100 illegal immigrants were rescued Wednesday morning, May 2, 2012, from a set of stash houses: Now Photo : TheMonitor.com