When men and women try to cross the border from Mexico and enter America illegally, they often spend days in what people call a stash house or a drop house. These conspicuous buildings function as refuges for immigrants who are waiting to be transported elsewhere when they can locate a vehicle of some kind. Many times smugglers will help families to get across the Texas border and then they will hide them here until they have paid their fees. The houses dot the fringe near the Texas state line, and are stitched in the Rio Grande Valley. Police have also located the stash houses in Houston. While these homes appear to just be cheap rental facilities that are used to store illegal aliens, they can also be places of horror for unsuspecting immigrants.
According to the New York Times, police have discovered that the stash houses are usually riddled with misery. The families who are hidden inside are often starved, beaten, or raped by the guards and smugglers. In May, a police squad came upon a trailer and house at the end of a dead-end dirt road. They assumed that this was a stash house, and went in to investigate. Illegal aliens poured out of the house and trailer and started running away from the officials. Yet when police discovered a third residence in the back of the facility, they were shocked by what was inside.
The aliens were locked in with thick chains on the doors and bars on the windows. According to the reports, the house was only 800 by 1,000 square feet, and was made of painted white cinder blocks. There was no air-conditioning, and no electricity. The small space was crammed with about 50 immigrants, some of whom had been in the dank room for days. One immigrant told an investigator that he was warned he would be killed or beaten if he was not quiet. Many of the captives had not been fed for over 48 hours.
The two smugglers who were in charge of this drop house were caught and plead guilty to the charge of conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrants. One of them, age 23, said that he would greet the smuggled families at the stash house by warning them of the horrors that awaited them. In another Texas stash house only 15 miles away, the police discovered 33 immigrants that were stuffed into a 400 square-foot home. They were given two eggs and three tortillas once a day to eat, and told that they were not permitted to leave the residency. A police chief in Alton, Texas says that stash houses used to harbor 10-15 people at maximum. Now, it's common to discover 40-75 immigrants in a two-bedroom building.
Border patrols will raid these stash houses regularly, or call police to investigate if they find a questionable looking piece of property. Any harbored immigrants are normally sent back to Mexico. According to the Customs and Border Protection, more than 2,000 stash house residents have been caught in the Rio Grande valley sector alone. Some of the people locked inside these homes welcome the police and are grateful to return back to their homeland to escape the horrible conditions they find themselves in.
The house lords have been accused of sexually assaulting their captors, forcing them to work, starving them, denying them drinks or a place to sleep, and torturing them for entertainment. Smugglers have also used their position to hold immigrants captive and extort ransom money from relatives who intend to pay the smuggler's fees. While these houses have become an escalating problem in Texas, they have declined in other states like Arizona and California. Last year, law enforcement caught over 805 illegal aliens in more than 50 homes. In 2008, these states rendered about 3,220 people in 180 homes. The US government hopes to get rid of these stash houses so that they can regulate immigration and keep people from the misery that they have experienced inside.