Dennis Rodriguez
A traffic stop in Encinal on Friday, September 8, resulted in the second capture of a smuggler in as many weeks by local police.
Dennis Lee Rodriguez, 37, of Taft, Texas, was jailed in La Salle County on felony human smuggling charges after officers intercepted his Ford F-250 pickup truck and found three Mexican nationals under the vehicle’s auxiliary fuel tank.
A report on the case indicates Rodriguez was stopped for a traffic violation and gave officers consent to examine the pickup truck. The three undocumented immigrants were discovered wedged into a crawl space between the base of the auxiliary tank and the bed of the pickup truck. Each has been identified as an undocumented immigrant.
The incident took place 13 days after Encinal police found four undocumented immigrant men and women inside a vehicle’s exterior fuel tank.
“Here is another example of the inhumane tactics these smugglers are using to attempt to bypass law enforcement,” Encinal Police Chief Pablo Balboa said.
