The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) assisted with an operation at a Texas airport that resulted in the arrest of 13 people linked to a human trafficking ring.
In a Sept. 1 tweet, Texas DPS South Texas Region said, “Texas DPS Pilot disrupted a human smuggling attempt by plane at a private airport in Edinburg. Two human smugglers attempted to smuggle 13 illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic and El Salvador by chartering a plane to Houston. The smugglers were arrested.”
As reported by Fox News, Texas DPS prevented an attempt to smuggle people using an airplane. On Aug. 31, a DPS officer was conducting a ramp check on a Gulf Stream IV when he realized that a group displaying "some suspicious behavior" was using the aircraft for human smuggling.
The South Texas International Airport in Edinburg was the location of the attempted smuggling incident, according to The Western Journal.
Maximo Diaz Jorge, the man who chartered the Gulf Stream, was contacted after the Texas DPS officer suspected foul play, according to Fox News. All three suspects fled in cars filled with migrants, telling the DPS officer that they were employees of an oil company traveling to Houston to see a baseball game.
DPS troopers engaged two vehicles in a high-speed chase after asking for assistance with the fleeing suspects, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Following the incident, DPS arrested 13 people trying to enter the country illegally from El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. Both drivers were arrested, both vehicles were seized and multiple people fled into the brush in the nearby area.
Agents of the Border Patrol arrested 30 migrant smugglers in just two days between Aug. 31 and Sept. 1. The majority of these arrests occurred at Edinburg Airport.
As reported by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol agents' apprehensions at the Southern border increased to 1.95 million in fiscal year 2022, mainly because of smuggling. In the period between October 2020 and September 2021, 1.73 million arrests were made at the Southern border.
In a recent interview with the Austin Journal, Texas Public Policy Foundation Policy Scholar Selene Rodriguez talked about human trafficking and its impact. “Human smuggling is the precursor of human trafficking. People who conspire with human smugglers to illegally enter the United States typically incur thousands of dollars of debt to make the trip. After entering the country illegally, these same people are often forced to pay off that debt through forced labor and sexual exploitation, which is the essence of the modern-day slavery that is human trafficking.”
