VERGENNES — Three of 10 Honduran illegal aliens arrested when the two vans carrying them were pulled over for speeding are being held for violating previous detention orders, immigration officials said.

Leslie Lawson, public affairs officer for the U.S. Border Patrol Sector headquarters in Swanton, said two of the men had been deported from the United States and re-entered the country illegally.

Another man had been ordered deported but he never had been. A fourth passenger was found to be younger than 18, Lawson said, and considered an unaccompanied juvenile illegally in the country and searching for work.

Lawson said the border patrol began deportation proceedings against the men Tuesday in Swanton. Six of the men were released pending a deportation hearing, Lawson said. The juvenile remained in custody Tuesday, Lawson said, as did the three men with records of violating previous deportation orders.

Officer Rodney Trudeau of the Vergennes Police Department said he stopped the vans with New Jersey license plates at 11:16 p.m. Monday as the vehicles headed north on the city's Main Street. Trudeau said he first approached two men in a cargo van.

"The driver couldn't speak English very well," Trudeau said Tuesday. "I asked if he was a U.S. citizen, and he said he wasn't.

Trudeau said he determined that all six men in the cargo van and four of the eight men in the second vehicle, a passenger van, were in the United States illegally. One man could speak a little English, Trudeau said, and he said the crews had been hired by a New Jersey contractor and instructed to go to Burlington to do construction work for a retailer.

Lawson said it was not known who their employer was to be.

The names of the men were withheld by the border patrol. Trudeau said he did not cite any of them for speeding.

Lawson said three men from New York and one from North Carolina — all U.S. citizens — were released at the scene.