WebProNews

Tag: border

  • 100 Illegal Immigrants Found in House

    100 Illegal Immigrants Found in House

    The Houston Chronicle reports that more than 100 people were found in a “stash house” in the city this week. A stash house is a holding point for illegal immigrants who cross the border into the United States while they await further steps, perhaps meeting up with a relative or getting transportation to wherever they are heading next.

    The Houston Police were tipped off to illegal activity in the home by a man who called to tell them that a “coyote” – someone in the business of illegally transporting people across the border for money – was holding relatives of his, asking for more money before letting them go.

    Sometimes, coyote operations will collect money from people as payment for getting them across the border, then extort further money from relatives once they are across.

    Police went to the address they were given, but did not observe anything untoward happening at the house from the outside. In fact, things looked very quiet, and the house was locked from the outside. But then they saw two men pull away from the driveway. They pulled the men over down the street in a “routine traffic stop”, and found guns and papers indicating illegal activity in the car. With that as their probable cause, police returned to the house and entered.

    What they found inside was shocking. Over 100 people were crammed into a house less than 1500 square feet in size. The windows were boarded up from the inside. There was only one toilet and no hot water. All the men in the group had been stripped of their shoes and pants, left only with underwear, to keep them from fleeing. The smell of unbathed bodies was almost overwhelming.

    “It was just filth, very squalid-like conditions inside. Trash bags with clothing piled as high as you can see,” a Houston Police spokesman said. “They were very surprised at the numbers of people inside. Some were just sitting on top of one another because there was just no room.”

    Police called out the name of the woman they had originally been notified about. She came forward from the throng of people, along with two children traveling with her.

    As police began to usher people outside in to the fresh air and sunlight, they heard tales of people being stuck in the house for days, even weeks.

    The Washington Post reports that Houston has seen large stash house operations before. It is a handy crossroads for across-the-border traffic, since it is only seven hours from Mexico.

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Greg Palmore said, “Houston is significant for the highway corridors that make up Houston, I-45 and I-10. With those two traffic corridors you can pan out anywhere in the United States. And it’s very easy to assimilate into the communities here.”

    Five men have been arrested in connection with the case, including the two stopped in the car initially, as well as three more who tried to flee the scene on foot. Police also found two chicken coops on the property with hundreds of chickens that they suspect were used in a cock-fighting operation.

    Image via Thinkstock

  • Border Tunnels: A Sophisticated Way To Smuggle Drugs

    Border Tunnels: A Sophisticated Way To Smuggle Drugs

    Drug cartels have resorted to underground tunnels to avoid detection since security has become more stringent along the border.

    Since 1990, about 170 tunnels have been discovered, the majority of them have been along California and Arizona’s border with Mexico. As a result, the U.S. border patrol will soon unveil an underground wireless robot equipped with camera to search underground networks.

    The tunnels vary in terms of size and complexity, depending on who’s using them. While some can be extremely simple such as those dug by hand, others can be extremely sophisticated, including ventilation, lights, and supports for ceiling.

    Those employed to construct rudimentary tunnels are miners who use hoes, shovels, jackhammers and picks to excavate soil which is transported out of the tunnel’s opening in Mexico. They normally old-fashioned tools like a compass to do their work.

    However, cartels who want to construct sophisticated tunnels normally hire engineers as well as miners to build the tunnels. Those tunnels found near San Diego, Arizona, are good examples of sophisticated tunnels.

    U.S. border officials have estimated the cost of more sophisticated tunnels to be between $2 million and $3 million.

    Once a tunnel has been built, the smugglers use it to move guns and drugs as well as people who want to sneak into the U.S. Officials say that some traffickers are selective about what can move through their tunnels but most sophisticated tunnels are mainly used for moving drugs and guns across the U.S Border.

    Marijuana is among the drugs that are mostly moved through the tunnels because it is bulky and riskier to move above the ground. In 2011, authorities seized about 32 tons of marijuana that was being moved across a 600-yard tunnel in the southern California. The tunnel was equipped with lighting, railcars and ventilation while the floor was lined with wooden planks.

    Image via Wikipedia

  • Justin Bieber Tour Bus Busted on the Border for Pot

    Another day, another media tornado for Justin Bieber: a Canadian drug-sniffing canine discovered marijuana and paraphernalia for personal usage inside a Bieber tour bus on the border between Windsor and Michigan. This is not the first time for Bieber, nor the first time a celebrity was busted at this checkpoint.

    The Detroit Free Press reports Customs and Border Protection as seizing the goods and issuing a civil penalty to the bus driver shortly before releasing the bus and its passengers. The incident is confirmed by Customs and Border Protection spokesman Ken Hammond.

    Bieber was not on the bus at the time, and arrived to perform later that night.

    This incident is the most recent in a series of bad moments in the saga of Justin Bieber. In April of this year, a Bieber bus was busted in Sweden also for marijuana. TMZ reported a Stockholm PD representative saying of the incident that a special narcotics unit was contacted by the officer. That unit issued a warrant to lawfully search the Bieber bus, discovering a small amount of ‘narcotics’ which local papers reported as being weed.

    Slamming Bieber in some circles seems to have become popular, if not sporting, particularly when he offends the sensibilities of your local hockey team.

    Just a couple weeks ago, TMZ debuted it’s horrendous cellphone footage of Justin Bieber urinating in a restaurant’s mop bucket. Some people were more offended by the swearing at the visage of Bill Clinton, but worry not; the Biebs had a response to that on Twitter, but only after he had a lovely phoned-in conversation with the former president, hopefully about how to handle world-shattering scandal:

    If you consider yourself as one of Bieber’s fans, even you may be the target of such disdain! Just 4 days ago, Bieber stepped onto his balcony to greet them via an Instagram picture, only to later be photographed hocking a loogie down onto them. Just to warn you, those last pictures are rather gross.

    For Justin Bieber, this will be a summer that his fans the internet will remember forever.

    Article image courtesy goes to TMZ.