Alien smuggler nabbed in Houston

Houston Chronicle:

A Salvadoran man on Tuesday was charged with smuggling after authorities found 30 illegal immigrants in a cramped two-bedroom apartment in southwest Houston, including three people needing medical treatment.

The news of the local arrest coincided with President Bush's announcement of plans to continue pushing for comprehensive immigration reform, despite the collapse of Senate negotiations last week.

With the failure of the latest push for reform, some local law enforcement officials, including Maj. Michael J. O'Brien of the Harris County Sheriff's Office, said it's time for the federal government to stop the influx over the border into Houston, a major distribution hub for human traffickers.

"Smugglers are bringing people across the border, and they're ending up in the Houston-Harris County area in what they're calling safe houses, and sometimes we're fortunate enough to find out about it, but for the most part, we aren't," O'Brien said. "And there's not a lot we can do about it because a lot of the community won't come forward because of threats from the smugglers."

"My personal opinion is that we need to enforce the laws that are already in place as far as federal immigration," he said, adding that the sheriff's office will offer any assistance possible to the federal anti-smuggling task force.

On Tuesday, Walter Martinez-Malgar, a 36-year-old Salvadoran, was charged in federal court in Houston with smuggling in connection with the discovery of the 30 illegal immigrants, said Leticia Zamarripa, an ICE spokeswoman

At 6:45 p.m. Monday someone called 911 to report that a large group of people was in the apartment and they "were being held against their will," said Houston Police Department spokesman John Cannon.

Inside the red-brick building in the 6500 block of Gessner, police found men, women and teenagers from Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras, Zamarripa said. She said three of the illegal immigrants were treated at a local hospital for "possible dehydration," and were scheduled to be returned to their home countries along with the remainder of the group.

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In recent months, authorities have discovered illegal immigrants stashed across the city, using single-family homes as cover, or picking apartment complexes on the south side where new arrivals blended in quietly. On March 1, federal agents found 67 people in a single-family home off Interstate 45 near Griggs.

"What happens in many cases, [smugglers] tell them they'll bring them over for a price and when they get here, they change the price, hold them for a ransom until their family pays more money, or they're basically placed into servitude to work it off," O'Brien said.

At times, the smuggling business in Houston has turned violent. On April 17, the occupants of two trucks — one carrying at least 10 people — exchanged gunfire on the Southwest freeway, killing an El Salvadoran man. In April 2006, one man was wounded in a shootout at a house in northwest Houston.

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Oscar Moran, 39, was at the complex midday Tuesday, visiting his mother-in-law on a tourist visa from El Salvador. He said he saw the ICE bus roll into the parking lot Monday night, and "when I saw it, what impressed me was all the efforts these people made to come here...."

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Many of these people have been in the country long enough to qualify for the path to citizenship under the new immigration bill, and those who did not could probably get papers that would make them seem qualified. A good smuggler would do that. How would the bill stop the smuggling? Who knows.