Police arrested a Carrizo Springs man on Wednesday morning in south New Braunfels on charges of smuggling three men who were in the country illegally.
Erik Delacruz, 43, was booked into the Comal County Jail on three charges of human smuggling, which is a felony in Texas.
New Braunfels Police Department spokesperson David Ferguson said that an officer conducted a routine traffic stop on Delacruz’s vehicle near I-35 and South Walnut Ave.
Delacruz had been driving the car with three male passengers north on I-35.
The officer asked Delacruz about the passengers.
“But the answers about those three passengers that he gave did not add up in the way that the officer would expect,” Ferguson said, “and so he began interviewing each of the passengers.”
The Mexican nationals — aged 47, 27 and 22 — admitted to crossing the border illegally near Piedras Negras to find construction jobs.
They paid to cross the border and be picked up by Delacruz.
He was taken into custody, and NBPD contacted Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
The incident marks the fourth arrest this year in New Braunfels for human smuggling of illegal immigrants.
“We do have I-35 running through the middle of the city — that is a common route where a lot of things can happen, including drug trafficking and smuggling of persons from the border,” Ferguson said. “Our officers are trained to be on the lookout for all of those things.”
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