On September 7, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristy Noem announced that 35 people were arrested on Thursday, September 4, in connection with an alleged smuggling conspiracy.
According to her post on X, two Mexican nationals were arrested after a car fell over in El Paso while attempting to evade Border Patrol officials. The follow-up operation resulted in 28 arrests in Chaparral. The overall number of arrests is now 35: 25 are still in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, eight have been charged with alleged illegal re-entry and transferred to the United States Marshal Service (USMS), and two alleged smugglers are facing federal prosecution.
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“This is law and order in action.” Human traffickers, take note: do not try these dangerous schemes. We will find you, prosecute you, and you will face the full force of justice,” Noem stated.
On September 4, community members and organizers met at the site of the raid. They documented allegations of brutality by federal agents, aggressiveness toward spectators, and the agents’ unwillingness to identify themselves.
Maty Gonzalez, a community organizer at NM CAFe, said she received a phone call at 1:29 p.m. saying that 15 ICE vehicles were outside a house in Chaparral, NM. While Gonzalez was on her way, agents began parking cars in front and behind the home, she said.
According to Jovanny Sebastian Hernandez, campaigns manager for the New Mexico Dream Team, the federal agents present included officers of ICE, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the United States Border Patrol, and the Border Patrol Tactical Unit.
According to a video provided by a community member to The Round Up, some of the agents wore normal clothes, while others donned military-style uniforms. The footage also shows a tactical vehicle, as well as unmarked vans and trucks.
Hernandez described the weapons as heavy-duty rifles, non-lethal crowd control weapons, plastic explosives, and flash bangs.
As additional community members arrived, Hernandez claimed the agents began photographing and filming their license plates and the interiors of their vehicles as “some kind of intimidation tactic.” Hernandez reportedly claimed that a federal agent threatened “to take me down if I wasn’t five feet away from him.”
Hernandez also claimed the agents failed to identify themselves to spectators.
“I and others asked multiple times to multiple people who were there, the agents, to identify themselves and what agency they worked for, and they never did,” Hernandez informed us.
Gonzalez stated that the federal agents arrived without a search warrant. Gonzalez stated that two vehicles left to obtain a search warrant, which took many hours. Gonzalez stated that they obtained two warrants, as the first one had an inaccurate address.
Lucas Herndon, a community member and eyewitness, reported that at about 5:30 p.m., federal officials pushed a tactical vehicle closer to the property. According to Herndon, the agents dismounted the van and allegedly placed a door-breaking explosive on the glass front door. Herndon claimed that the agents used a bullhorn and sirens to threaten to blast open the door if no one came out.
Following the threats, Herndon stated, a group of young males departed the house. The tactical squad apparently threw a flashbangthrough the door, entered the house, and led the remaining residents out. The plastic explosive was eventually taken from the door and never detonated.
According to Herndon, one of the girls who left the residence did not wear shoes. He also claimed to have overheard a Border Patrol agent say a seven-year-old girl was hit by a flashbang.
“Ultimately, they used violence against children, and that’s unacceptable,” Herndon stated. “. . .The scope of what I saw was armed, militarized agents of the government assaulting a house full of unarmed individuals.”
Volunteer and community member Angel Amabisco gave The Round Up a video of federal agents wearing police vests and a line of individuals with their hands behind their heads and backs.
According to Herndon, the majority of the passengers were loaded into two vans, with at least two being separated and transported in a Border Patrol vehicle. He stated that federal officers removed the detainees’ personal things and placed them in plastic bags.
Gonzalez said the 28 people seized at the house appeared to be from Latin and South America. Gonzalez estimated that there were six to eight youths.
Throughout the raid, Gonzalez stated that she educated the detainees on their rights, telling them not to sign anything they couldn’t comprehend or were forced to sign, and to write phone numbers on their arms.
Hernandez reported that the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the location but left after conversing with federal investigators.
District Representative Sarah Silva said community people contacted her to inform her of the ICE presence. She contacted Congressman Gabe Vasquez, who dispatched Doña Ana County Sheriff deputies to authenticate the agents’ legitimacy. Silva also stated that she was aware that the authorities were looking for someone who had been charged with “human trafficking.”
“I do not want individuals or cartels trafficking people or drugs in our communities and want this activity to stop,” Silva informed the crowd. “When ICE agents and Border Patrol agents show up in our neighborhoods masked, unwilling to identify themselves, and take people without explanation in unmarked vehicles, this creates distrust and fear, the opposite of public safety that people in Chaparral deserve.”
According to Anita Skipper, Communications Coordinator for Doña Ana County’s Public Information Office, the incident happened in response to a reported case of human trafficking.
“According to Sheriff [Kim] Stewart, the raid was not an ICE raid,” Skipper informed the press. “The Border Patrol responded to an allegation of a human trafficking stash house. She received calls about this from the public in time for the event and validated the information.
Gonzalez verified that the home was being used to host unauthorized immigrants. She said she has a video of the residence with ID cards from numerous nations.
Hernandez believes this is part of a wider problem with the federal government’s immigration policy. He demanded that federal and municipal governments be held accountable for constructing “an immigration system that denies people the right and ability to move, the freedom to transform their lives, and the freedom to create what they want in a country where they want to live.”
“I don’t think it’s right that people are human traffickers. I think that’s wrong,” Hernandez said. “And I think the reason that it’s so profitable, that business is so profitable by the cartels and by independent folks who do that kind of stuff, is because of the United States, is because of the immigration system they create that incentivizes folks.”
This is a developing story.
