CBP officers find woman in SUV’s gas tank at California-Mexico border crossing

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers discovered a woman being smuggled inside an SUV’s gas tank last week at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, according to court records.

While CBP officers regularly find drugs hidden inside the gas tanks of vehicles, it’s much less common — if not unprecedented — to find a person concealed inside one.

The woman, a Mexican citizen, was discovered when a CBP officer inspecting the SUV “observed a human foot sticking out” of the gas tank, according to a criminal complaint against the driver filed in San Diego federal court. Officers then began taking apart the tank, which was not factory standard, and discovered the woman lying in a puddle of gasoline, appearing disoriented and suffering from apparent chemical burns to her legs and feet; she was taken to a hospital for medical evaluation, treated and quickly released.

The incident occurred around 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 27, and involved a U.S. citizen driving a GMC Yukon that an officer at the port of entry noticed was emitting a strong odor of gasoline, according to the criminal complaint. The driver allegedly acknowledged the smell and said that it had “been like that for a couple days.”

The officer then knocked on the SUV’s gas tank, and believing that it sounded “solid” rather than hollow, requested a dog trained to sniff out drugs and humans, according to the court records. After the dog zeroed in on the underside of the SUV, the driver was detained, and the vehicle was taken to a secondary screening area.

An officer monitoring a vehicle X-ray machine did not detect anything wrong with the vehicle, but another officer doing a physical inspection spotted the woman’s foot, according to the complaint. Officers then removed the SUV’s back seats and carpeting to reveal an access panel that appeared to have been newly welded.

The officers pried open the panel to free the woman, who was unable to get out of the tank on her own, according to the court records. Officers, including a medic, helped her out of the tank and out of her gasoline-soaked clothes, then gave her a “decontamination shower” before an ambulance arrived and took her to a hospital.

In an interview later that night, the woman told officers that she was going to pay $10,000 to be smuggled into the U.S., according to the complaint. She said she’d been instructed where to go and what vehicle to get into.

She told officers that once she’d made her way into the gas tank, she heard someone outside screwing the compartment closed above her and realized that she was trapped inside with no way to get out on her own, according to the court records. She said she used a rag soaked in water and placed over her face to help her breathe because she felt like she would asphyxiate inside the tank.

She also told the officers that as the SUV moved, gasoline was splashing on her and “she felt like she was burning alive,” the court records said. She said the burning feeling on her left leg was so intense that she thought she was going to lose her leg, and she estimated that she was in the tank for about 90 minutes.

The SUV’s driver was arrested on suspicion of human smuggling for financial gain, and according to the complaint, he allegedly admitted to investigators that he knew he was smuggling a person inside the tank and had expected to be paid $5,000.

The driver allegedly told investigators that he’d driven the SUV into Mexico about six days prior, given the vehicle to people he believed were human smugglers and then stayed at a Tijuana-area hotel waiting for the vehicle to be ready, according to the court records. He told investigators that he didn’t know where he was taking the woman but had been instructed to call for instructions after he crossed the border.

The woman from the tank is not facing charges for trying to enter the U.S. but instead is a material witness in the case against the driver, which is typical for human smuggling cases.