A US citizen has been apprehended and has been charged with smuggling migrants, and a stash house in El Paso has been raided in separate new immigration cases, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office reported 235 new immigration and immigration-related felony cases between August 14 and 20.
Several alleged migrant smugglers and migrants have been charged with multiple DWIs, violent offenses, thefts, and prior removals.
Here is a look at three cases with El Paso or Borderland ties.
Among the new cases, Pablo Clark-Guillen, a US citizen, was arrested and charged with immigrant smuggling.
A prosecution complaint states that Clark-Guillen, who has previously been convicted of immigrant smuggling, planned to pick up an undocumented worker from India in Fabens on August 18. The complaint states that when agents approached Clark-Guillen and ordered him to turn off his van, he agreed but destroyed his phone in an attempt to destroy evidence, cutting his hands in the process, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Clark-Guillen has three prior DWI convictions in addition to his smuggling conviction from 2024, according to the US Attorney’s Office.
On August 18, Border Patrol agents investigating two different smuggling incidents tracked a vehicle to a property in El Paso. The authorities conducted an immigration inspection and determined that the driver, Aldo David Manjarrez-Vazquez, was an unauthorized alien. According to the criminal complaint, Manjarrez-Vazquez has worked as a migrant pickup driver and coordinator since March 2024, earning around $720 per migrant he picks up and $250 as coordinator. Manjarrez-Vazquez is accused of picking up and transporting more than 10 unauthorized migrants in El Paso and Tornillo.
Jesus Gamboa-Chavez, an undocumented migrant from Mexico, was arrested for migrant smuggling after a Texas Department of Public Safety (TXDPS) trooper performed a traffic stop and requested assistance from Homeland Security Investigations. A criminal complaint claims that subsequent inquiry led authorities to a stash house in El Paso that Gamboa-Chavez was reportedly renting.
A collaborative operation including HSI, USBP, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, and TXDPS resulted in the arrest of 16 illegal individuals from various Central and South American nations, two of whom were underage children. One of the children was unsupervised.
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