HOUSTON – A man has been arrested after a 16-year-old girl missing from Boise, Idaho for days was found in Houston on Monday.
Ruben Dario Visquerra Aguilar, 24 is charged with harboring a runaway in Harris County but he’s facing much more serious charges in Idaho for first-degree kidnapping and human sex trafficking of a child.
He remains in custody in Houston after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lodged a detainer, an ICE spokesperson tells KPRC 2, adding that Aguilar is a Guatemalan national who entered the country illegally as an unaccompanied minor.
The teen packed a bag, left a note, and ran away from home on Oct. 10, according to the Boise Police Department. Detectives learned she had been talking to someone online.
“Through their investigation, detectives gathered information showing the teen had traveled through eastern Idaho, to Utah, and eventually to Texas,” the Boise Police Department wrote in a statement.
Aguilar is accused of paying someone to drive the teenager from Boise to Houston, records show. Boise Police are still investigating who the unknown person who transported the teenager is.
According to HPD, Aguilar was arrested at a home in the 9700 block of Sutton Meadows Court on the northwest side on Monday after they found the girl at the home with him.
Outside the home Wednesday, Aguilar’s family members told KPRC 2 he paid a stranger about $2,000 for the transport of the teen, who told an adult family member via WhatsApp that she was 19 before arriving in Houston.
Speaking in Spanish, his family member said Aguilar met the teen on Facebook and they’d been talking for several weeks. The teen also told them she wanted to be his partner.
The family members said they thought everything was normal until several police units arrived at their home.
The girl was taken to the hospital for an evaluation.
The girl had hickeys on her neck and police are conducting a follow up sexual assault investigation, court records show.
Boise Police said she’s expected to be brought home and that additional federal charges are possible for Aguilar.
Trafficking in Houston
A primary form of trafficking involves someone posing as a romantic partner, Caroline Roberts of Children at Risk said.
“It is much easier to get a child who cannot consent to come to them and think that they are in love and that this is their romantic partner,” Roberts said.
Mistake of age is not a defense, Roberts said, adding that transporting children across state lines is an occurrence being seen more often in these types of cases.
“It’s risk mitigation,” she said. “Law enforcement is looking out for them, but they have no idea where to look. And it just makes it much, much more difficult for that child to be identified and for the trafficker to get caught.”
Boise Police said social media clues helped in this case but Aguilar’s family said they never realized the teen was a runaway.
Roberts said it may be time to re-think the use of “runaway.”
“They are not running away of their own accord outside of influence. They are running away because they were groomed and manipulated by someone that is a predator,” she said.
According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, there were 2,373 signals of human trafficking from Texas last year, which include hotline calls, text or online reports, web chats or emails received.
900 cases were identified in 2023 in the Lone Star State involving 1,723 victims.