Near Laredo, officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety discovered a group of migrants imprisoned inside a tractor-trailer. Troopers found that the driver of the tractor-trailer did not have a license for operating a commercial vehicle.
This week, a tractor-trailer was stopped in Webb County, Texas, by troopers who were working along the border as part of Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star. When the policeman checked out the car, he discovered 18 migrants locked up inside of the trailer.
The driver, a man named Michael Wilson from Cotulla, Texas, was taken into custody by the policeman. Lieutenant Chris Olivarez, a spokesperson for the DPS, said in a tweet that he is being charged with smuggling people.
When the Laredo Sector Border Patrol officers got there, they found out that the refugees were from Mexico. The 18 immigrants were taken in by the officers.
.@TxDPS stops a commercial motor vehicle (CMV) & disrupts a human smuggling attempt in Webb County. A DPS Trooper stopped the CMV for a traffic violation. The driver did not possess a valid commercial driver license. A search revealed 18 illegal immigrants locked inside the… pic.twitter.com/7aIwVPOmCn
— Chris Olivarez (@LtChrisOlivarez) September 19, 2023
As of the end of July, the most recent data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, officers in the Laredo Sector had caught nearly 40,000 illegal border crossers between ports of entry. This is a decrease from the same time last year when there were more than 94,000.
