84 women rescued by Texas officers from Houston-area brothels run by cartels: authorities

Inside the establishments, investigators discovered soiled mattresses on the floors of cramped, hidden rooms, conditions TABC Chairman Kevin Lilly condemned as a “house of horrors.” Lilly criticized cartel involvement, attributing the exploitation and suffering of the victims to cartel influence.

"Their childhood has been stolen from them," Lilly stated. "No counseling, no treatment, can ever take away the horrors that they've experienced."

During a press conference, Lilly described the brothels as purposefully misleading in appearance, resembling typical bars with dance floors and pool tables but containing hidden rooms with cement floors.

"They run through an assembly line of horrific treatment and sexual abuse, some 30 times a day, from four in the afternoon until two in the morning," he explained.

Nine bars suspected of human trafficking in the Houston-area have been shut down following the raids that were conducted last week. Emphasizing the cartel’s influence at the border, Lilly argued for tougher measures.

“We must close our border. An open border is madness. We've experienced it. I saw evidence of it. Please take the politics out. We have to act now. We have to end Catch and Release. We have to deal with the cartels. We have to declare them the enemy of our country and take action," Lilly said.

Lilly detailed how families crossing the border must often pay cartels exorbitant fees, sometimes up to $25,000 per person, a sum that many migrants cannot afford. He said women recruited with promises of waitress jobs are instead coerced into lives of “misery and horror” in the sex trade.

"No one steps across the border without the cartels involved, and that involvement is monetary," explained Lilly. "If you are a family and you come across the border, you have to play $10,000, $20,000, $25,000, per passenger, that's money they don't have. These are poor individuals, some who have walked 500 miles only to find out that they have to pay a toll that they don't have."

The operation, dubbed Operation Bad Traffic, has already resulted in the arrest of four individuals on sex trafficking charges and the rescue of 84 women.