New Jersey ? Federal agents rounded up 66 people Monday in a series of raids described by officials as smashing a ring that smuggled Mexicans into the United States and may have forced women to work as prostitutes.

Officers with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Newark raided 15 locations in New Jersey and New York early Monday after New Jersey State Police pulled over two vehicles containing at least 10 women who had been working in brothels in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, said Kyle Hutchins, special agent in charge of the bureau’s Newark office.

Thirty-six women and 30 men were taken into custody, Hutchins said. Two were charged with illegal money transfer and the rest were being held on immigration charges alleging they were in this country illegally, he said.

It was at least the third major immigrant smuggling ring believed to be operating in New Jersey in recent years.