FIST Team nets 49 immigrants, alleged smugglers
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March 04, 2011 8:32 AM
The Monitor

EDINBURG — Illegal immigrants said they were threatened with beatings as they were kept inside two houses on the city’s outskirts.

The U.S. Border Patrol Fraud, Intelligence, Smuggling and Terrorism Team detained 49 illegal immigrants from Guatemala and Honduras during a raid Tuesday on a property near the intersection of Hoehn and Rogers roads.

Agents arrested Lauriano Jaimes Garcia and Regino Gomez Martinez during the raid.

Two illegal immigrants told agents that Jaimes would tell the immigrants to stay quiet, stay away from the windows and not go anywhere, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court.

Jaimes also allegedly threatened to whip the immigrants with a wooden plank if he was arrested for running the stash house, the complaint states.

Another immigrant told agents she paid Gomez about $3,000 to be smuggled north, the complaint states. She was picked up at a gas station near Monte Cristo and McColl roads and transported to the nearby trailer house, where women and men were separated by gender.

Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputies alongside the FIST Team raided the houses and made the arrests late Tuesday morning. A detention hearing for the suspects is set for this coming Tuesday in U.S. District Court in McAllen.


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