Texas: More than 100 People Found in Suspected ‘Stash House’

Photo Credit: Cody Duty/Houston ChronicleThe phone call to police was a plea to help save a family held by smugglers. But when authorities raided the south Harris County home which they believed held the woman and children Wednesday, they found 110 people imprisoned in a packed, rancid “stash house” where smugglers had locked them away pending payment for their freedom.

A tipster had told authorities the night before that he was being extorted by smugglers, and feared for the safety of relatives from Central America. The tipster had said that a coyote drop of the mother, her 7-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son was supposed to have taken place Tuesday on Houston’s north side, but it didn’t happen and they were missing.

Police have not explained what led them to the Almeda School Road house, where they set up surveillance Wednesday morning. At 10 a.m., they stopped two men in a vehicle leaving the house. Three more suspected smugglers were arrested after they tried to flee, Houston Police Department spokesman John Cannon said.

But their biggest discovery came when authorities opened another door to the house, and encountered a “sea of people coming at the officers as they entered,” Cannon said.

Federal agents, along with police, sheriff’s deputies and constables, found them packed into the home, sitting on each others’ laps, hungry, thirsty, and exhausted.

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