The US Department of Justice recently announced the arrest and indictment of eight alleged human smugglers. The investigation that led to the indictment was a part of “Joint Task Force Alpha,” a collaboration between the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security.
The US Department of Justice recently announced the arrest and indictment of eight alleged human smugglers. According to the DOJ, these arrests “disrupted and dismantled a prolific human smuggling operation in Texas and across the Southern United States.” The investigation that led to the indictment was a part of “Joint Task Force Alpha,” a collaboration between the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security to prevent cases of human smuggling originating from Central America and impacting communities along America’s southern border.
According to the DOJ, the alleged leader of the human smuggling operation was Erminia Serrano Piedra, 31. The other seven defendants are Kevin Daniel Nuber, 41; Lloyd Bexley, 51; Jeremy Dickens, 45; Laura Nuber, 40; Katie Ann Garcia, 39; Pedro Hairo Abrigo, 33; and Oliveria Piedra-Campuzana, 53. All eight were arrested in accordance with an indictment issued by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas. The defendants were picked up by police officers in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas.
The indictment notes that the eight defendants carried out the “unlawful transportation and movement of migrants within the United States in deplorable conditions for profit.” The organization allegedly “used drivers to pick up migrants near the U.S.-Mexico border and transport them further into the interior of the United States,” housed migrants in an Austin-based “stash house,” and “used methods to transport migrants that placed their lives in danger as they were frequently held in contained spaces with little ventilation.” Migrants transported were from Mexico, Guatemala, and Columbia. The migrants paid the human smugglers to help them cross the US-Mexico border illegally.
According to the DOJ, defendants working for the human smuggling organization were “allegedly paid as much as $2,500 for each migrant they unlawfully transported.”
Border Patrol Agents have made 2.15 million apprehensions at the southern border in the fiscal year 2022—October 2021 to September 2022—many resulting from smuggling operations, according to US Customs and Border Protection. This number meets and exceeds the number of arrests at the southern border last year—1.73 million between October 2020 and September 2021.
"At DHS, countering human smuggling is a moral imperative, a law enforcement priority, and a necessity for our national security," US Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary John Tien said. "It is a central plank of our efforts to address irregular migration across the western hemisphere, and to hold transnational criminal organizations accountable for perpetrating vile and horrific crimes. We are unwavering in our commitment, and sending a strong message: if you manipulate and imperil and take advantage of struggling migrants, we are coming for you. This investigation is a perfect example of how we're bringing our agencies and components together to leverage the full force of the federal government to do just that."
In a recent interview with The Austin Journal, Texas Public Policy Foundation Policy Scholar Selene Rodriguez asserted that “Human smuggling is the precursor of human trafficking. People who conspire with human smugglers to illegally enter the United States typically incur in 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.”