Mexican Smugglers Arrested after Assaulting Immigrants

By Matthew Williams
17:12, May 17th 2008
53 votes
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U.S. federal agents arrested more than 60 illegal immigrants on Wednesday in a crackdown, authorities said. It appears that three Mexican men held the illegal immigrants in a two-story house in South Los Angeles. One woman was raped and others say they were threatened with sexual assault.

18-year-old Daniel Pena, 23-year-old Jose Teul, and 35-year-old Saul Mendez were charged with harboring illegal immigrants at the “drop house.” Drop houses are commonly used to hold illegal immigrants until they are transported to their ultimate destination.

The immigrants were from El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Ecuador. Among them, there also were three toddlers – one of them is a U.S. citizen - and six teenagers, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice declared. She also mentioned that the immigrants included teenagers and toddlers from Central and South America. Inside the home authorities discovered a pistol and a stun gun that the men allegedly used to threaten the immigrants, Kice said.

The immigrants said they were paying $5,000 to $7,000 in smuggling fees to be led across the border in Arizona. One person reported paying $12,000.

Authorities depicted the conditions in the house as “utter squalor with trash and food piled up two to three feet high inside,” the Associated Press reports.

Daniel Pena repeatedly raped a woman who had been at the house since last summer. It seems that the woman is now seven months pregnant. She told U.S. federal agents that Pena threatened her with a gun.

The harboring charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. However, if the defendants are found to have committed sexual assault or brandished weapons during the crime, their sentence will be harsher.



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