Tip leads to East Benson Highway, where illegal immigrants are said to have been in 13 rooms.

LUKE TURF

An anonymous call led Border Patrol agents to 135 suspected illegal immigrants hiding in 13 rooms at a South Side motel yesterday.

Neal Patel, who owns the 18-room Economy Inn at 220 E. Benson Highway, said he didn't notice anything suspicious before the raid.

Patel has owned the motel, where rooms cost $35 to $45, for four or five years, he said. This is the first immigration sweep at the place since he's owned it. The rooms were rented yesterday, but because he had not spoken with the Border Patrol, Patel would not say more.

Patel said he didn't make the anonymous call.

U.S. Border Patrol Assistant Chief Arturo Guajardo said the call came about 4:30 p.m. He said three plainclothes Disrupt agents - whose specialty is to disrupt smuggling - responded and confronted three of the suspected illegal immigrants.

The suspects tried to run but were held while agents dialed 911. Guajardo said the agency is "very grateful" for the prompt response by the Tucson Police Department.

"Once the situation was controlled, the rest of our agents showed up," Guajardo said.

The group was mostly men with some women. There was no indication of their nationality, Guajardo said.

After the three men were detained, Guajardo said, agents learned there might be more immigrants hiding in the motel.

As of last night, no one had been identified as a smuggler, Guajardo said.

"We're confident we've got at least one in the group here," he said.

The Border Patrol takes anonymous calls seriously and acts on information provided, Guajardo said.

The immigrants were taken to the Tucson Border Patrol station for processing, he said.

Phoenix crackdown

The U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, bolstered by dozens of agents temporarily assigned to Phoenix, has rounded up nearly 750 illegal immigrants and arrested 20 suspected smugglers from 13 "drop" houses in recent weeks.

The response marks a dramatic change from just a year ago, when local police agencies, frustrated by the federal government's inability to deal with the illicit immigrant-smuggling trade flowing through Phoenix, frequently were forced to let illegal immigrants and smuggling suspects go free after uncovering drop houses, which are places where immigrants are "dropped" to wait until smugglers are paid for their passage.

Last Wednesday, federal agents caught an additional 222 illegal immigrants, including 15 suspected smugglers, at two Phoenix drop houses.

During the first two months of this year, Border Patrol agents caught 79,417 illegal immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border, or 18,745 more than in the same two months last year.

Border Patrol officials tied the increase to a larger number of agents, not a rise in the number of migrants entering illegally.

"We are catching more people," said Andy Adame, spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, which has 1,800 agents, 150 more than last year. "The numbers are higher because we are doing a better job out there."

The Arizona Republic contributed to this article.