Tonight, a well-known figure from Orange Walk is detained at the Ladyville Police Station. He's the owner of this 15 seater Ford van with Orange Walk Plates - which police pursued on the Burrell Boom Road on Monday night. The van was spotted by a patrol team which thought to pull it over because the van appeared completely weighed down - and police figured it had some kind of illicit cargo - little did they know it was human cargo. When the police pursued the driver ran the van into a yard, bumped a tree and then fled, with the 15 passengers inside scrambling to get away. Four males and one female were caught there, and then on the following day, police found five more females in an abandoned house in Los Lagos - that included two minors. The minors were crying for their father - who had accompanied them on the dangerous trip - but ran in a different direction when the police caught the van. Those minors are now in custody of the Social Services Department as human trafficking victims.
Tonight, 3 of the other 5 face the threat of being imprisoned. That's because they can't pay court fines after they were arraigned in the Magistrate's Court today. They've been identified as 18 year-old Yessenia Gonzalez, 19 year-old Miriam Guevara, and 24 year-old Maribel Guevara, and two 17 year-old female minors.
All 3 adults were arraigned before Senior Magistrate Sharon Frazer for the charge of illegal entry to which they all pleaded guilty. A removal order was granted for their expulsion from the country, and they were ordered to pay a fine of $1,000 forthwith, or they would have to spend 6 months in prison. All three women begged the court to allow the authorities to give them a chance to call back home to make arrangements to pay the fines. At this time, they remain detained by authorities to give them chance to make those contacts.
And as for the owner of the van, he remains detained at this hour. He ahs told police that he simply rented the van and knew nothing about what they were being used for. We cannot release his name but we note that this Orange Walk resident has pending charged for two counts of unlawful possession of passports. Those documents were found at his home in a raid in June of last year, when Panamanian and Spanish passports were found.
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