ELDORADO, Texas (KXAN) - More than 400 children are in state custody Tuesday morning in the ongoing sweep of a remote West Texas polygamous commune.

Child Protective Services called the raid and removals from the compound the biggest such operation the state of Texas has ever seen.

"This is not about numbers. This is about children who are at imminent risk of harm we believe are being abused or neglected," said Marleigh Meisner with CPS.

Department of Public Safety troopers are holding men in the commune near Eldorado until they finish a building-to-building search of the 1,700-acre complex. It was built by jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs.

CPS has taken the women and children to San Angelo, so they can stay together.

The raid was sparked by a 16-year-old girl's call. She reported being abused and girls as young as 14 and 15 were being forced into marriages with much older men.

KXAN Austin News has a crew in nearby San Angelo, following the ongoing situation.

It's hard to imagine what it would be like to live in a secretive religious compound like the one in Eldorado, a closed community where women and young girls rarely bothered to leave as they followed their religious teachings.

It's hard to imagine what the 400 children and more than 130 women taken from the the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to San Angelo are going through.

The group was being housed in a state services building where they were being questioned by CPS.

When the residents of Eldorado found out four years ago that a polygamist religious sect was setting up shop in their town, the editor of the local newspaper was a very busy man.

"There was a lot of paranoia in the beginning, 'They're going to come take our daughters.' There was a lady with a sign, saying: 'The devil is here,'" said Eldorado Success Editor Randy Mankin.

The tension eventually eased, but the mystery surrounding this compound didn't.

Everyone wondered what happened inside the place no one ever left.

"They live on their property, we never see them. One or two men come into town but we never see them," said Mankin.

Although no one has left the ranch in Eldorado, there have been deserters from other fundamentalist church of Latter-Day Saints compounds.

KXAN Austin News spoke to Brenda Jensen, a former member of the church, who said she could only imagine how strange the outside world would seem to these women and children. The sect is entirely self-sufficient and members rarely venture out into the community.

Jensen, who lived at a similar compound in Canada, did not consider such rigid control of her life to be a good thing.

"We were raised on fear, and it's still there," Jensen said. "That's how they control their people. It's just out of sheer fear."

The FLDS is a splinter group of the LDS Church. It was formed in 1935 by a number of former LDS Church members who still believed in polygamy. It's not a large group. Estimates are that the sect has about 12,000 members, and stories exist that young men frequently are expelled from FLDS communities because they pose competition with church elders for wives.

Jensen said she lived in poverty and fled the compound when a marriage was arranged for her with a man in his 50s. Jensen threatened to kill herself if she couldn't have her freedom.

The fact that Jensen escaped the church is rare, she said. Typically, defiant girls are turned over to the leaders of the religious community and married off quickly. If they are married when they speak out against the church, the consequences are much worse.

"If the women rebelled, they don't get their children," Jensen said. "That's why the women stayed. They don't want to abandon their children."

As for these children, some of them child-brides, Jensen said she hopes the state will understand their resistance to the outside world given their time in the compound.

"This is going to be very traumatic for them," Jensen said. "This is going to be very hard because all of their life, they've heard what they are doing is right."

Jensen's family decided to leave the compound.

The children in the Eldorado compound will be in court mid-April, when decisions are likely to begin in regards to placing children. At that time, sect members may or may not have something to say about their life in Eldorado.

In the meantime, the Texas DPS and CPS will offer an update on the church members at a briefing on Tuesday.

Tune in to KXAN Austin News at 5, 6 and 10 p.m. for more details on this story and continue checking KXAN.com where the latest details will be updated throughout the day on this developing story.

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