U.S. Border Patrol agents at the Falfurrias, Texas checkpoint arrested a man for transporting migrants in the wheel well and fuel tank of a pickup truck. Noel Mercado, the driver, has been convicted of human smuggling and faces up to 10 years in federal prison.
The incident took place back in Jan. 5, with Mercado being convicted by U.S. Attorney Nicholas Ganjei on Wednesday. Mercado, a Jonesboro, Arkansas native, is set to be sentenced on June 11 and faces a $250,000 fine.
CBP agents at the Falfurrias checkpoint requested a secondary inspection after a canine unit notified them of irregularities in the truck. A further X-ray scan showed agents that two people were hiding inside a modified wheel well compartment while two more people were located in an auxiliary fuel tank below the truck's bed, Border Report said.
During the two-day trial Mercado claimed that he had traveled to the Rio Grande Valley to trade baseball cards and other collectible items. He told investigators that he was unaware of the people concealed within the truck he was driving.
"As the department cracks down on human smuggling and illegal immigration, we can expect smugglers to get more desperate, and thus more creative," Ganjei said. "I would like to thank the jury for their service."
With tougher border security measures under the Trump administration, human smugglers are resorting to more sophisticated methods to transport migrants. Earlier this week, The Latin Times reported of a group of smugglers that cloned U.S. Border Patrol vehicles.
Concretely, two U.S. citizens (Uriel Perez and Jovani Sanchez) along with Mexican national (Keven Valdez Ramirez) used a cloned Border Patrol K-9 vehicle to smuggle 24 migrants through a breach in the border wall near Andrade, California, to a residence in Yuma, Arizona.
The truck, a white Ford F-150, was modified to resemble an official Border Patrol unit, complete with matching license plates. The driver also wore a uniform similar to that of Border Patrol agents.
Tougher security measures have also increased smuggling fees. According to a migrant recently apprehended by Texas state troopers near McAllen, he said he agreed to pay cartel operatives $18,000 to be smuggled into the U.S., with $12,000 paid upfront and $6,000 still owed. A Chinese migrant also reportedly paid over $70,000 to be smuggled across the border.
Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officials attribute the fee increase to the reduced number of migrants crossing and intensified border security measures implemented under the Trump administration, according to the report. U.S. Border Patrol data indicates a 76% drop in encounters along the southern border in January 2025 compared to the previous year. On a single day, Saturday, Border Patrol reported only 200 migrant encounters, marking a 15-year low.
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