1 dies, 7 hurt as SUV falls into El Paso Upper Valley ditch; migrant smuggling suspected
One person died and several others were injured after an SUV suspected of smuggling undocumented migrants fell into the waters of an irrigation ditch Monday morning in El Paso's Upper Valley, authorities said.
El Paso police spokesman Sgt. Enrique Carrillo said that a passenger in the SUV died at the scene. It is the latest crash in a trend of human smuggling attempts in vehicles in the Upper Valley near the Texas-New Mexico state line.
An El Paso Fire Department Water Rescue Team pulled eight people from a vehicle partially submerged in water, including one person with life-threatening injuries and seven with minor injuries, the department said in a tweet.
The crash occurred shortly after 5:30 a.m. Monday near the intersection of Artcraft Road and Upper Valley Road, according to the city's online incident notification system.
The U.S. Border Patrol had another vehicle stopped near the intersection when the SUV came speeding down the street and struck a Border Patrol vehicle before continuing on Upper Valley Road. Border agents lost sight of the SUV before finding it had crashed and dropped into the ditch, Carrillo said.
The crash is under investigation by the police Special Traffic Investigations Unit. Names, countries of origin and other information about the driver and passengers were not immediately available as a smuggling investigation continued.
"As you know, we've recently had a string of these type of crashes — some involved (law enforcement) pursuits, others there haven’t been pursuits," Carrillo said.
"The crashes may have started with some kind of law enforcement action with an attempt to stop a vehicle (when) the driver fled," Carrillo said. "The thing about that is a lot of organizations and some in the media want to assign blame to law enforcement, but I want to remind everybody that the blame should be assigned to only one group and that is the persons that are doing the smuggling of illegal immigrants."
More:Migrants found in trunk after car driven by teen girl crashes during Texas DPS pursuit
The Texas Department of Public Safety reported that 23 human smuggling suspects, ranging in age from 18 to 43, were arrested during a three-day surge operation Aug. 9-11 in El Paso last week.
The operation included the Texas DPS, the Border Patrol, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations and El Paso police.
One of the arrests was the driver of an SUV that crashed into the side of the longtime Como's Italian Restaurant on North Mesa Street while fleeing from police while transporting undocumented migrants in West El Paso. Five migrants were treated for injuries, but there were no deaths.
Human smuggling:Details emerge in Santa Teresa crash that killed two
On July 27, a 19-year-old driver was arrested on vehicular homicide charges after two Mexican men died when they were ejected from a Chevrolet Tahoe carrying 12 passengers when it rolled while running from Border Patrol during a smuggling attempt in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, just outside El Paso. "The people to blame here are the coyotes that are smuggling these people and then doing everything they can by any and all means to evade and elude law enforcement," Carrillo said.
"The coyotes and organizations doing the human trafficking are endangering not only the persons that they’re smuggling but the public in general. This (Monday's crash) could have very easily involved persons heading to work."
More:Border Patrol busts human smugglers in El Paso's Upper Valley, Southern New Mexico
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: One dead, several injured in SUV crash in El Paso Upper Valley ditch
