All five men charged with kidnapping a teenage girl are living in the United States illegally, according to local law enforcement officials.
Five men were arrested early Monday morning in northeast Missouri after a 14-year-old Indiana girl was reported missing from her home, according to Fox 4, a Missouri-based outlet. The men — all of them Honduran or Mexican nationals and living in the U.S. illegally — were taken into custody and charged with kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child.
The arrests were made after the Missouri State Highway Patrol was notified that the girl’s cell phone was pinged going westbound down U.S. highway 36 and a trooper spotted an SUV matching the description of the vehicle she was believed to be traveling in.
The men were 44-year-old Marlon Aguilar of Honduras, 41-year-old Arturo Eustaquio from Mexico, 56-year-old Carlos Funez of Honduras, 24-year-old Noe Guzman Hernandez of Mexico and 19-year-old Daniel Ruiz Lopez of Honduras.
All five individuals are considered flight risks because they are in the U.S. illegally, according to probable cause statements filed by the Missouri State Highway Patrol and reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The men were subsequently placed into Macon County Jail.
The court documents described the girl as a runaway juvenile. The girl’s father had contacted local Indiana police after he observed her getting into a vehicle determined to be a black Dodge Durango, with her cell phone location data making it possible for law enforcement authorities in Missouri to locate her.
The arresting officer said the men were trafficking her from Indiana to California, according to the court documents.
The arrests follow other high-profile crimes allegedly committed by illegal immigrants, such as the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, the rape and murder of a Maryland mother of five while on a hiking trail and the shooting of two New York Police Department officers during a police chase.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF about the immigration history of the five men arrested for kidnapping.
Featured image credit: Flickr/U.S. Department of Homeland Security)
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