Five will face federal charges in stash house raid

More than 100 people were found Wednesday morning inside a house at 14711 Almeda School Road in Southeast Houston, Wednesday, March 19, 2014. Police found the group, who are all presumed to be in the country illegally -- at a squalid "stash house" in southeast Houston. Police say it appears to be human smuggling operation. (Cody Duty / Houston Chronicle) less More than 100 people were found Wednesday morning inside a house at 14711 Almeda School Road in Southeast Houston, Wednesday, March 19, 2014. Police found the group, who are all presumed to be in the country ... more Photo: Cody Duty, Staff Photo: Cody Duty, Staff Image 1 of / 45 Caption Close Five will face federal charges in stash house raid 1 / 45 Back to Gallery

Federal authorities plan to charge at least five people in connection with Wednesday's discovery of dozens of imprisoned people living in a Pearland-area stash house, officials said.

Brian M. Moskowitz, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Houston said Thursday the five have been arrested on a variety of offenses, including hostage taking, alien in possession of a firearm and conspiracy to harbor illegal aliens.

Moskowitz announced the pending charges during a congressional committee hearing at Texas Southern University about combating human trafficking in the country. He did not give any other details about the suspects or the case. ICE officials were still interviewing people Thursday afternoon.

Officials said 115 people were discovered in the packed, rancid stash house on Almeda School Road in south Harris County. Ninety-nine were men, 16 were women, one of whom was pregnant. Nineteen were juveniles, according to Greg Palmore, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"Stacked up on top of each other, literally," said Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland, who also spoke before the committee. Officials are working with those rescued in seeking guidance and legal counsel.

County records describe the house as having 1,284 square feet, but a neighbor said an addition was constructed.

The property owner could not be reached for comment. His son, a man who identified himself as Alfredo Suarez Jr., said his father, 65, had bought the property as an investment and never lived there.

He expressed shock hearing that people had been found inside the home.

"That's a [lot] of people," he said.

Thirty were Salvadoran, including two women and a child, officials at the embassy for El Salvador in Washington, D.C., said. The country's Foreign Affairs Ministry started the process of contacting their relatives in El Salvador. The Salvadoran Consulate in Houston is following up to identify their needs in terms of human rights and humanitarian action, according to officials at the embassy.

3 back with families

Mexican officials said five men were Mexican nationals. Three juveniles who were in the group have since been reunited with their families, according to a news release from Mexico's embassy in Washington, D.C.

Numbers from Guatemalan and Honduran officials were unavailable.

Federal officials will decide each person's fate on a case-by-case basis, according to Palmore, the ICE spokesman.

Ignacio Pinto-Leon, a Houston-area immigration lawyer, said that in ordinary cases, if ICE agents find someone they believe is illegally in the country, they can arrest that person and seek either an expeditious removal (which does not require a hearing before a judge) or regular removal hearings, which do.

In Wednesday's case, many could well have been victims of a crime and the government might use their testimony in a prosecution of the smugglers, Pinto-Leon said. If that is the case, the U.S. government might allow them to stay in the country, temporarily, while their services are needed, he said.

"In cases as yesterday's, they will probably do that with some people, not everyone," he said.

Moskowitz said the people were smuggled, but not technically classified as trafficking victims. Human trafficking victims are eligible for special "T-visas" that allow them to stay in the country legally under certain conditions.

Local law enforcement officials who spoke before the congressional committee put an emphasis on distinctions between human smuggling and trafficking. Moskowitz stressed that the two crimes have their own specific elements under federal law.

"At its core, human trafficking is a crime against a person," he said. "It's about the exploitation of that person by another person, usually through force, fraud or coercion in either the commercial sex trade or some form of labor."

A case of smuggling

Human smuggling is a crime against the United States that involves illegal movement of people across the country's borders. Preliminary information in Wednesday's raid indicates that it is a case of smuggling, Moskowitz said.

But he added that people who are smuggled into the country can eventually wind up as trafficking cases.

Moskowitz stressed to the legislators that his agency is bound by the laws passed by the federal government in what constitutes trafficking.

"As horrific as some of these things are, you could be chained to a wall and beat," he said. "But unless it meets the elements in the laws that you've passed, it's not trafficking under the federal level and our hands are tied."

U.S. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Katy, who led Thursday's hearing, and other committee members acknowledged the dilemma.

"Maybe that's something we need to address," McCaul said.