A Texas emergency services employee has been charged with using an ambulance to try to sneak illegal immigrants deeper into the U.S. by trying to claim he was carrying a COVID-19 patient to a hospital.
Hugo Daniel Torres was arrested on March 2 and indicted this week on smuggling charges after Border Patrol agents stopped the ambulance he was driving at a highway checkpoint outside of Laredo, Texas.
Agents said his passenger in the cab raised suspicions with the way he avoided answering questions, so they flagged the ambulance for a secondary inspection. That’s when they found the passenger was in the country illegally.
Looking into the rear compartment, they found a medical technician and a woman purported to be the COVID-19 patient. She was in fact an illegal immigrant, and she told agents she was actually in good health.
When questioned, Mr. Torres, 45, told agents he was called in by the EMS dispatch office to go to a local hospital and take a COVID patient to San Antonio. He claimed that when he showed up at the local hospital, he called out the patient’s name and a woman came forward. He said he didn’t realize he was carrying illegal immigrants.
The illegal immigrants told agents they were both waiting for Mr. Torres at the hospital, and one of them — the fake COVID patient — said Mr. Torres knew she was an illegal immigrant.
Border Patrol checkpoints serve as a second sort of border wall, preventing people who make it across the boundary from reaching deeper into the U.S., and they account for a large number of illegal immigrant apprehensions.
Smugglers have turned to inventive ways to try to breach the checkpoint barrier, and using ambulances or faking medical distress is a regular tactic.
A week after the ambulance attempt, agents say they stopped a Nissan Pathfinder carrying one man wearing an adult diaper, sitting on a urine pad and wearing a mask connected to an oxygen tank. Another passenger seemed to be deaf.
During a secondary inspection, the woman continued to pretend to be deaf — but took off her sandals and place her hands on the wall, indicating she could in fact hear, agents said.
They also realized the other passenger’s oxygen tank wasn’t turned on, and the tubes weren’t actually connected to his nose.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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