Leroy Johnson Steed is charged with tampering with physical evidence, a third-degree felony. Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger said Tuesday that Steed was arrested Monday night and was being held in a jail near the compound.

Vinger said he had no other details.

The 41-year-old Steed is the second member of the Yearning for Zion Ranch to be arrested since authorities raided the religious retreat last week.

Levi Barlow Jeffs, who was arrested Sunday, is charged with interfering with duties of a public servant, also connected to the search.

Texas authorities said Monday they removed 401 children — mostly girls — from the compound in the largest child-welfare operation in the state's history.

The raid on the isolated, Eldorado property was triggered by allegations of physical abuse called in by a 16-year-old girl, whom authorities have yet to identify.

"We have taken legal, temporary custody" of the children, said Marleigh Meisner, spokeswoman for Texas Child Protective Services. Each of the children will be given a guardian and placed in foster care.

Authorities received a search warrant to enter the compound Friday after the 16-year-old called to say she had been married to a 50-year-old man and allegedly had a baby at 15. Under Texas law, girls younger than 16 cannot marry, even with parental consent.

In addition to the children, 133 women who "wanted to leave" also were taken, Meisner said.

State troopers were holding an unknown number of men in the compound until investigators finished executing a house-to-house search of the 1,700-acre property.

The raid is the largest such removal from a polygamist compound in nearly 55 years. A July 26, 1953, raid in Colorado City, Ariz., involved more than 300 women and children. It backfired on then-governor Howard Pyle when pictures showed weeping children being torn from frantic mothers. Most of the children and women returned to their homes within months.

Texas is handling the case appropriately by letting parents leave with their children, said John Llewellyn, a retired Salt Lake County sheriff's lieutenant and a former polygamist.

"Something needs to be done," he said. "You can't turn your back on something like this."

Others say removing the children without talking to the girl at the center of the complaint is wrong.

"What the government is doing is totally outrageous," said Bonnie Macri, executive director of the activist group JEDI (Justice, Economic Dignity and Independence) Women in Utah.

Tela Mange, of the state Department of Public Safety, said the criminal investigation was still underway.

The compound, built by polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, belongs to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which split from the Mormon Church after it renounced polygamy.

Contributing: Associated Press; Wendy Koch in McLean, Va.

Enlarge By Tony Gutierrez, AP Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints members watch children play with bottles of bubble water at their temporary housing at the Fort Concho National Historic Landmark in San Angelo, Texas, April 7.

		Officers escort members of The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints onto a school bus in Eldorado, Texas, Sunday. Authorities have removed hundreds of women and children since they received a search warrant to enter the compound on Friday. By Tony Gutierrez, AP

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