Immigrants from Nepal among people found in abandoned La Joya house

August 02, 2010 11:06 AM
Jared Taylor
The Monitor

LA JOYA — Police found 11 suspected illegal immigrants in an abandoned tool shed Sunday morning.

Officers responded to an "old, dilapidated house" at the intersection of 12th Street and Perales Martinez at 10:39 a.m. Sunday after neighbors said they heard people on the property, said Joe Cantu, a La Joya police spokesman.

No one was inside the house, but officers found 11 people crowded in a small tool shed littered with soda cans on the property.

Two of the immigrants told police they are residents of Nepal, police said. The other nine people, aged between 18 and 44 years old, said they were Salvadoran nationals.

One of the Nepalese immigrants, a 28-year-old woman, said she was robbed of her documents, jewelry and money while emigrating through Mexico, Cantu said. The only possessions she had left were her clothes, a ring she'd hidden in her bra and paperwork from Mexico immigration officials, expelling her for illegally entering the country.

Officers brought the immigrants water and burritos while they waited for U.S. Border Patrol agents to arrive. The case remains under investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents.

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