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CEDAR CITY — A man driving an SUV that contained passengers without passports, allegedly looking to find work in Denver, has been arrested in Utah for investigation of human smuggling.
Pascual Jeremias Chan Paxtor, 18, of Los Angeles, was booked into the Iron County Jail early Tuesday and by midday was charged with human smuggling, a second-degree felony.
About 1 a.m., a Utah Highway Patrol trooper pulled over an SUV on Interstate 15 in Cedar City for a traffic violation, according to a police booking affidavit,
Eight people plus Paxtor were in the vehicle. The trooper found Paxtor in the front passenger seat. He told the trooper that he should have been driving but one of the other passengers offered to help, the affidavit states.
"I asked the passenger who the driver was to him and he said his friend, but didn't know his name," the trooper wrote in the affidavit.
Upon further questioning, the trooper learned that Paxtor had picked up his passengers — most of whom are originally from Guatemala — in California and was on his way to Denver because his passengers "wanted to work and didn't have passports. Pascual admitted that he was getting paid $1,000 to drive the occupants and that it was his second or third trip performing such an activity. He also told me that his friend had set him up with the people to be transported and provided approximately $800 for fuel and expenses for the people being smuggled."
When investigators checked Paxtor's wallet, they found multiple business cards.
"This business card had a picture of a minivan on it with multiple different destinations such as New York, Nevada (and) Miami. Pascual told me that he had made the business card for driving people that needed rides without passports and charged them different rates for different locations," according to the affidavit.
Correction: Court documents initially listed Paxtor as being from Cedar City; he is from Los Angeles. An earlier version also identified Paxtor as Pastor.
