While conducting a human smuggling enforcement operation in North Phoenix, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s Human Smuggling Unit deputies discovered a brother and sister, ages five and six, inside one of the two vehicles being used by the smugglers to transport their human cargo.
According to Sheriff’s detectives who interviewed the children, the parents did not accompany the children into the United States, neither of them knew what state they were to be taken to, and all other occupants inside the vehicle were complete strangers to them.
Deputies took into custody a total of 22 undocumented entrants on the operation.
Two load vehicles were located and stopped. The stop led detectives to a Mesa drop house where two smugglers were arrested for harboring undocumented entrants.
Sheriff Arpaio denounced the treatment of the children as “a troubling act of recklessness.”