U.S. charges four Mexicans in death of 53 migrants trapped in sweltering truck

Federal prosecutors announced charges Tuesday against four Mexicans who they say helped orchestrate the smuggling tragedy last year that killed 53 illegal immigrants trapped in a semitrailer on a 100-degree Texas afternoon.

Smugglers knew the air conditioner had given out, but they went ahead with the three-hour trip from the border to San Antonio, prosecutors said in an indictment with ghastly details of the journey.

Some migrants screamed and pounded on the walls of the trailer. Others clawed at the sides as they tried to break through. Still others passed out from the heat.

When authorities reached the scene, 48 migrants, including a pregnant woman, were dead. Five more died at a hospital in what analysts labeled the worst single migrant catastrophe in border history.

“Dozens of desperate, vulnerable men, women, and children put their trust in smugglers who abandoned them in a locked trailer to perish in the merciless south Texas summer,” said Jaime Esparza, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, which is prosecuting the case.

Authorities announced the charges on the anniversary of the tragedy and promised to run down the smuggling ring.

Yet experts said the underlying factors remain a year later.

“Nothing has changed. Tomorrow, as we hit the summer months, we could have another tractor-trailer full of dead migrants and nobody would be surprised,” said Mark Morgan, acting commissioner at Customs and Border Protection in the Trump administration.

He said the cartels continue dominating the border by deciding tactics and procedures and forcing the U.S. to react.

Arrested this week were Riley Covarrubias-Ponce, 30; Felipe Orduna-Torres, 28; Luis Alberto Rivera-Leal, 37; and Armando Gonzales-Ortega, 53.

The Justice Department said the men helped organize smuggling routes from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico into the U.S. They shared smuggling routes, guides and stash houses to hold migrants and maintained a fleet of tractors and semitrailers to ship them deeper into the U.S., prosecutors said, and they coordinated to save costs and maximize profits.

The truck was driven through the Border Patrol’s checkpoint on Interstate 35 near Laredo, but agents there didn’t detect the migrants. According to the indictment, smugglers used a powder to conceal the smell of the migrants from dogs that are trained to sniff out smuggled people or drugs.

Prosecutors said the migrants paid $12,000 to $15,000 apiece to be smuggled into the U.S. It came with a three-time guarantee: If they were caught and sent back across the border, they could try again without paying more.

Authorities said the trailer was holding at least 66 migrants, including the pregnant woman and eight children.

The smugglers met the trailer at the remote location in San Antonio, where the migrants were supposed to be moved to other vehicles. Instead, the smugglers were met with a morgue.

The smugglers spirited away at least two of the migrants, according to the indictment. Forty-eight were already dead and 16 were taken to a hospital.

Also found at the scene was Homero Zamorano Jr., whom authorities fingered as the driver. Investigators quickly tracked down Christian Martinez, who they said was coordinating the smuggling trip.

Both were charged last year.

One person covered by the indictment remains unnamed in court documents.

Smuggling resulting in death carries a potential sentence of death, but the Justice Department announced Tuesday that it would not seek execution in these cases. The department previously said it wouldn’t seek the death penalty for Mr. Zamorano and Mr. Martinez.

The case shook the immigration world last year by exposing ongoing holes in border security and putting a gruesome point on the deadliest year on record at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Guatemala’s president called for tougher penalties for human smugglers.

Immigration experts renewed those complaints this week as they marked one year since the tragedy.

“Let’s remember the 53 lives lost on June 27, 2022, and honor their memory by calling on our communities and elected officials to take urgent action to guarantee a compassionate, fair and just immigration system,” said Dolores K. Schroeder, CEO of RAICES, a Texas nonprofit that offers legal services to refugees and migrants.

Action on immigration remains gridlocked on Capitol Hill, much as it has for the past two decades.

The result is that cartels continue to rake in cash on the misery of migrants.

Initially, it seemed cartels’ behavior might have changed.

Two weeks after the San Antonio case, agents at a highway checkpoint in Texas stopped a semitrailer with 70 illegal immigrants and found they had been given a radio to contact the driver and two hatchets to bash their way out in case they became trapped inside.

That does not seem to have caught on as a general practice, however.

The Washington Times smuggling database, which tracks border cases, has recorded a drop in prosecutions involving large truckloads of migrants, but Mr. Morgan said that might mean smugglers are getting smarter about avoiding charges rather than a decline in truck activity.

The Times has reached out to Customs and Border Protection for comment for this report.

Other tactics used to get illegal immigrants deeper into the U.S. include railways and aircraft. 

Authorities near Laredo reported this week that they had snared an attempt to smuggle 20 illegal immigrants behind a fake plywood roof in a portable barn being hauled on a flatbed truck through a Border Patrol checkpoint.

Mr. Morgan, now a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said a longer-term trend involves recruiting children to drive smuggling loads. The children are recruited on social media and told that they will be let off with a warning if they are caught. Usually, that’s exactly what happens, Mr. Morgan said.

The semitrailer tragedy last year highlighted another tactic of using cloned trucks. A Texas trucking business said the rig the smugglers used was painted to look like one of the company’s, which might have helped ease its passage through the Border Patrol checkpoint.

After the deaths, the Texas Department of Public Safety set up a new safety inspection checkpoint for commercial vehicles along the route the truck took. The department said that checkpoint and others have helped recover more than 1,770 migrants from trucks since March 2021.

In one odd sidebar to the tragedy, authorities trying to track down the origins of the truck served a search warrant on a home in San Antonio and found two illegal immigrants living there in possession of firearms. That is a violation of the law.

The Justice Department initially linked the two men to the smuggling incident, but prosecutors have since acknowledged that they weren’t involved.

Damage was already done, however.

Through his attorney, Juan Claudio D’Luna-Mendez told a judge that the publicity and the wrong accusations linked to the deaths put him and his family in danger. It also is tainting the jury pool, the attorney argued.

The attorney persuaded the judge to agree to bar a television station from airing courtroom sketch artist pictures of Mr. D’Luna-Mendez.

Mr. D’Luna-Mendez also has argued that he had a Second Amendment right to possess a firearm. He says the law barring illegal immigrants from obtaining or possessing a gun is unconstitutional. His attorneys say illegal immigrants are included in the “people” who the Second Amendment says have “a right to keep and bear arms.”