An El Paso County woman was arrested Thursday after authorities said she left three children alone in an Odessa motel so she could smuggle people across the border.
According to an Odessa Police Department report, a U.S. Border Patrol agent called OPD shortly after midnight on June 10 and said he’d just arrested Abigail Flores, 24, on human trafficking charges and she’d told him she’d left her 13-year-old sister to watch her 3-year-old twins at an Odessa motel.
When Odessa officers arrived at the motel, the teenaged sister said she’d been brought from El Paso to Odessa to watch her niece and nephew while her sister made money acting as a coyote, according to the report.
The OPD officer who wrote the report indicated the motel the trio were staying at is located in a “common area for violent crimes and narcotics.”
Flores was booked into the Ector County jail on three counts of abandonment/endangerment of a child, a state jail felony.
She remained in custody Friday afternoon; no bail had yet been set.
