ATASCOSA, Texas — Texas deputies searching for a stolen vehicle discovered a major auto theft and possible human smuggling ring, authorities said.
Alejandro Juarez and Lidia Lucio Juarez, both 51, were arrested on Tuesday and charged with eight counts each of theft of a vehicle worth between $30,000 and $150,000, according to Bexar County online booking records. Each charge is a third-degree felony.
According to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, deputies found eight stolen work trucks -- some gutted of their seats to presumably make room for trafficking -- at a property in southern Bexar County on Saturday, KSAT-TV reported. The trucks, which deputies estimated to be worth more than $400,000, were found along with 11 undocumented immigrants hiding in a shed, according to the television station.
“Each vehicle was worth well over $50,000,” the sheriff’s office stated in an arrest affidavit.
Deputies originally were tracking down a ping on a stolen Chevrolet 2500 work truck when they found the other trucks and the immigrants on the Juarezes’ property in Atacosa, KABB-TV reported. The truck had been equipped with a GPS transmitter that allowed it to be tracked, according to the television station.
Deputies knocked at the front door and asked the woman who answered if she would allow them to “look in the backyard,” the affidavit stated. The woman told deputies that she had to call her father, but did not return after closing the door, KABB reported.
After an investigator obtained permission to search the premises, officials found Alejandro Juarez in a hidden crawl space in the shed where they found the immigrants, KABB reported.
The investigator wrote in the affidavit that he found several stolen vehicles in the residents’ carport. He added that he discovered “several truck bench seats, burnt truck bench seats, tools and equipment normally seen in work trucks.”
“From my training and experience, whenever there are bench seats removed from work trucks, it is for the intended purpose of transporting undocumented immigrants,” the investigator wrote in the affidavit.
The vehicle that had been originally detected in the area was found at a nearby property, KSAT reported.
Bail was set at $40,000 each for the married couple, online records show.