A 25-year-old El Paso woman who authorities said left three children alone in an Odessa motel room so she could smuggle people across the border was placed on three years’ deferred adjudication last week.
According to Ector County District Court records, Abigail Salinas Flores, 25, pleaded guilty to three counts of abandonment/endangerment of a child and was sentenced Friday by Judge Denn Whalen. Her case has been transferred to El Paso and she’ll have to serve 180 hours of community service there.
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 Flores 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 teen-aged 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.”
No federal cases could be located for Flores.
