Officials remove 11 children from New Mexico compound found starving, in filthy conditions

Law enforcement officers searching a rural northern New Mexico compound for a missing three-year-old boy didn’t locate him but found 11 other children in filthy conditions and hardly any food, a sheriff said Saturday.

The children, ranging in age from one to 15, were removed from the compound in the small community of Amalia, N.M., and turned over to state child-welfare workers, Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said.

Two men were arrested during the search, while two women at the compound were initially detained before being released pending further investigation, Hogrefe said.

One of the men, 39-year-old Siraj Wahhaj, was jailed on a Georgia warrant alleging child abduction while the other man, identified only as Lucas Morten, was arrested on suspicion of harbouring a fugitive, Hogrefe said.

WATCH: A look inside the New Mexico compound where 11 children were found

2:06 A look inside the New Mexico compound where 11 children were found

Online court records checked Saturday didn’t list defence attorneys who could comment on behalf of the men.

The search stemmed from an investigation involving the Taos County Sheriff’s Office, the FBI and Clayton County, Ga., authorities, Hogrefe said in a statement.

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Amalia is 145 miles (233 kilometres) northeast of Albuquerque and in an isolated, high-desert area near the New Mexico-Colorado border.

Hogrefe said authorities had conducted surveillance of the compound while looking for the missing boy. On Thursday, a Georgia investigator forwarded Hogrefe a message in which someone at the compound reportedly told another person that there were people starving and in need of water. Hogrefe then decided to get a search warrant for the compound.

Hogrefe said the search did not turn up the missing boy, identified by the sheriff as AG Wahhaj, but that investigators had reason to believe the boy had been at the compound fairly recently.

It’s not clear whether the boy and Siraj Wahhaj are related.

There were no injuries during the search, the sheriff said. But Wahhaj and Morten initially refused to follow commands, and Wahhaj was armed with a rifle and four handguns, Hogrefe said.

There was little food in the compound, which consisted of a small travel trailer buried in the ground and covered by plastic with no water, plumbing and electricity, he said.

“The only food we saw were a few potatoes and a box of rice in the filthy trailer,” the sheriff said.

The adults and children appeared like “refugees, not only with no food or fresh water but with no shoes, personal hygiene and basically dirty rags for clothing,” the sheriff said. “We all gave the kids our water and what snacks we had — it was the saddest living conditions and poverty I have seen.”