Thousands of people have been arrested under Texas’ human smuggling law. Now they face at least a decade in prison under sentencing guidelines that took effect this year.
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The woman told Persinger he’d earn about $1,000, and he agreed, hoping it would help his chances of scoring a date with her. And the cash wouldn’t hurt. They’re told to drive to specific spots on the Texas side of the U.S.-Mexico border, pick up a group of strangers and drive them to a drop off point in large Texas cities like Houston, San Antonio and Dallas. They’re instructed to send the unknown person messages along the way to confirm key milestones in the journey — like arriving at the initial destination and when the migrants get into the vehicle.
A Tribune review of arrests made by the Texas Department of Public Safety — whose troopers have flooded the border under Operation Lone Star — shows that about half of the people arrested by troopers for smuggling each of the last three years were younger than 27. Teens younger than 18 accounted for roughly 6% of arrests each year.
Justin Persinger was a musician traveling across Texas when he said he met a woman in a bar who offered him a chance to earn some money giving some people a ride.“Sometimes, that ride never comes,” Persinger, now 34, said in an interview this summer at the Maverick County Jail. “I didn’t know of the term ‘border crisis’ ‘til I was about to go to trial.”Two men wearing camouflage sit in the back seat of an SUV in the photo posted on an Instagram story.
“What's being asked doesn't seem particularly bad behavior — it's picking someone up and driving them somewhere else,” said Jack Winfrey, a lawyer with the RioGrande Public Defender’s office. “It's probably about the time that people get into their car and they smell like brush and they have mud on their boots, and they don't speak English — that's when it probably hits them,” she said.
“If people could apply for a working visa and could come here instead of paying $12,000 to a smuggler, they would pay the fees to the U.S. government. But that’s not possible,” Correa-Cabrera added. “This is a very hypocritical system.” By then, Texas police were beginning to surpass federal authorities in arresting and prosecuting people for human smuggling.
The most recent revision of the state smuggling law, passed by the Legislature a year ago, is perhaps the broadest. It added the 10-year minimum sentence and prohibits transporting a person with the intent of concealing them from police. Border prosecutors say smuggling cases are already clogging their court dockets and the mandatory minimum sentence means more defendants are likely to take their chances with a jury trial. Few cases filed under the new law, which took effect in February, have reached a final conclusion.
Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith, who supports the mandatory minimum sentence, agreed that local courts are unprepared for the crush of cases and will need more courtrooms, judges and support personnel. The trooper arrested Persinger. He had been arrested before, according to online court records, for low-level crimes like public intoxication, lying on a sidewalk and having an open container of alcohol in public.
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