Three U.S. Army soldiers have been arrested in Texas on criminal charges relating to smuggling illegal aliens.
The three soldiers were based at Fort Cavazos, which is near Killeen in Central Texas.
U.S. Border Patrol agents made an initial traffic stop of a suspicious vehicle in the city of Presidio, located in West Texas on the Rio Grande. As an agent approached the vehicle’s passenger side, the driver sped away—hitting a second Border Patrol vehicle and injuring the agent inside.
The vehicle was eventually stopped by local law enforcement officers who detained four individuals in the car. Three were illegal aliens, and one was identified as U.S. Army soldier Emilio Mendoza Lopez.
The driver of the vehicle was reported as being another soldier named Angel Palma, who fled on foot from the vehicle but was located in Odessa a day later.
Presidio is nearly 500 miles away from where the soldiers were stationed.
“Mendoza Lopez and Palma allegedly traveled from Fort Cavazos to Presidio for the purpose of picking up and transporting undocumented noncitizens,” announced the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas. “A third individual, Enrique Jauregui, is alleged to be the recruiter and facilitator of the human smuggling conspiracy.”
The three were linked in a co-conspiracy after Palma’s phone data, obtained following a search warrant, revealed collaboration in illegal alien smuggling operations.
Mendoza Lopez, Palma, and Jauregui are each facing one federal charge of bringing in and harboring illegal aliens. Palma and Jauregui also each face a separate charge of assaulting a federal agent.
