Voices below ground betrayed smugglers
By EMMA PEREZ-TREVINO Browsnville Herald
July 1, 2009, 8:09AM

Voices rising from Brownsville’s underground drainage system recently alerted federal agents to a human smuggling pipeline, leading to the arrest of two men, but whether there is enough evidence to hold them for trial is undecided.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Felix Recio is slated to determine July 9 if there is enough evidence against Ramon Acosta Hernandez and Agustin Sanchez Cruz, of Mexico, who are charged with bringing, guiding and shielding five undocumented immigrants into and in the U.S., federal court records show.

This is gleaned from separate criminal complaints against Acosta and Sanchez that senior U. S. Border Patrol Agent Hugo I. Ford filed Saturday in federal court. Acosta and Sanchez are being held on $50,000 cash bonds each.

Recio has scheduled preliminary hearings for both men at 1:30 p.m. July 9 at the federal courthouse here.

Patrol agents arrested the two men June 25.

The arrests came after agents on bike patrol saw a man, on a road by Hope Park near the Rio Grande, run toward the river. The man was not found and agents biked north toward East 11th and Fronton streets by the manholes to check if anybody was in the drainage pipes, the complaints state.

An agent heard voices coming from the pipes.

“Agents of the bike patrol unit rode down East 11th Street waiting for the subject to come out through one of the manholes,â€