On January 9th, in Mission, Texas, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) apprehended a Mexican smuggler sporting a Black Lives Matter sweatshirt. The smuggler had transported six illegal immigrants, among them a girl of fifteen years old, over the Rio Grande.
Reports show that after transporting a group over the Rio Grande by raft, the state has accused 23-year-old Mexican national Rene Alberto Mendez of criminal smuggling of individuals and felony trafficking of children under the age of 18.
Lt. Chris Olivarez of the Texas DPS said that they found his choice of Black Lives Matter sweatshirt to be a little peculiar, but they’ve seen more peculiarities in their travels.
Olivarez said that the photos captured by the cameras on the raft allowed them to piece together his movements from when he was on the water to where he was meant to deposit the passengers: in the bush.
As Olivarez pointed out, smugglers often use WhatsApp to organize their activities. Mendez was no exception.
A report shows that traffickers, who have ties to cartels and other organized crime groups and who benefit from the movement of persons and commodities via the regions they control, utilize social media platforms, particularly WhatsApp, as a tactic.
Here, they successfully retrieved his phone before his ability to accomplish any of those things. The intelligence that revealed his location, communication partners, and paperwork was gathered.
According to Olivarez, Mendez will be eventually handed over to ICE, who will most likely deport him to Mexico, regardless of whether he goes to jail or not. The hold would remain on his record indefinitely, regardless of sentencing. Smuggling efforts have decreased since January 2023, when the Texas DPS began collaborating with the Border Patrol. This is because the DPS can now apprehend smugglers and press state charges against them. The smugglers are adjusting their methods of human smuggling in response to authorities’ presence, so it’s affecting them.
They now recognize DPS by uniform and know that when they catch them, they will be thrown in prison.
