A Texas state trooper intercepted a suspected human smuggling run in Maverick County, Texas, arresting a Nicaraguan illegal alien allegedly transporting four foreign nationals including a Chinese Special Interest Alien toward San Antonio.
According to Breitbart, Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) spokesman Lt. Chris Olivarez released video of the January 30 traffic stop on a gray Toyota Camry along U.S. Highway 277. The trooper identified the driver as Juan Alfonso Merlo Ibarra, a 34-year-old illegal alien from Nicaragua and arrested him on four counts of smuggling of persons, a state-level felony, before transporting him to the Maverick County jail.
All four passengers were determined to be illegal aliens, and video from the stop shows each of them dressed in camouflage clothing. Authorities say the attire underscores how foreign nationals are attempting to evade detection between ports of entry and then link up with drivers moving them deeper into the United States.
One of the passengers was identified as BeiBei Liu, a 34-year-old Special Interest Alien (SIA) from China. Officials indicated it appears he and the others successfully sneaked across the border in camouflage before being picked up by the human smuggler for transport into the U.S. interior.
The remaining three passengers were identified as Mexican nationals who had also entered the country illegally. All four the Chinese SIA and the three Mexicans were turned over to Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents for processing and removal proceedings.
The following day, another DPS trooper in Maverick County stopped a separate vehicle and arrested a convicted sex offender allegedly engaged in human smuggling. The driver was identified as Kris Romar Hall. 71, a registered sex offender from Killeen, Texas, who was taken into custody on three counts of smuggling of persons and booked into the Maverick County jail.
The Texas DPS Sex Offender website states that a California court convicted Hall of Oral Copublation with a Child under the age of 14 in 2007, and records show he registered in Killeen in November and updated his registration again in December. These cases highlight how criminal offenders, including those with serious prior convictions, are exploiting the border crisis to profit from illegal immigration.
Both troopers involved are assigned to Governor Greg Abbotts Operation Lone Star, the state-led initiative launched in response to the Biden administrations lax border enforcement. The arrests of these illegal alien gotaways underscore the critical role Texas DPS plays in ensuring gotaways are apprehended before they can disappear into the U.S. interior a task that conservatives argue Washington has failed to perform, leaving border states to defend their own communities.
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