By Jill King Greenwood
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, May 30, 2007


Six illegal immigrants from El Salvador and Honduras were arrested this morning after a traffic stop, police said.
Pittsburgh police officers Tom Jacques and Ryan Carr of the Commercial Vehicle Enforcement team, passed a truck on the inbound Parkway West about 8 a.m., when they heard a loud noise coming from the vehicle.

"When they drove past it, they could hear all this noise from chains and lights that were hanging off the truck and dragging on the ground," said Sgt. Ray Rippole, who is in charge of the enforcement team.

The officers stopped the truck on Route 51 before the entrance to the Fort Pitt Tunnels, where they found "numerous safety and traffic violations," Rippole said.


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The men, who told Jacques they were subcontractors laying fiber optic cable for Verizon, had secured a trailer to the truck using only rope.
"It looked like a huge shoestring from a tennis shoe hitching the trailer to the other vehicle," said Trooper Robin Mungo, a state police spokeswoman. "It was extremely unsafe."

One of the men in the truck called the owner of the vehicle while police investigated, said city police spokeswoman Diane Richard.

A second vehicle carrying other subcontractors arrived, and some of those men told police they, too, are in the country illegally, Rippole said.

Police cited the driver of the first vehicle for not properly securing the trailer, having an illegal license plate and not having a driver's license, police said.

Police called investigators with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who took six of the eight workers into custody to verify their immigration status, Richard said.

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