Daijiworld Media Network - Texas
Texas, Oct 21: A federal judge in the United States has sentenced a Guatemalan man to 30 years in prison for his role in a 2022 human smuggling operation that resulted in the deaths of 53 migrants inside a sweltering tractor-trailer in Texas.
Rigoberto Román Miranda-Orozco, 39, was sentenced on Tuesday after admitting to arranging travel and accommodation for two migrants who died and another who suffered serious injuries in the incident.
US and Guatemalan prosecutors described the sentencing as another step towards justice in one of the deadliest human smuggling tragedies along the US-Mexico border.
The tragedy occurred in June 2022 when migrants were transported in a tractor-trailer from the border city of Laredo to San Antonio. Authorities said the vehicle's air conditioning malfunctioned, leaving those inside trapped in extreme heat during the approximately three-hour journey.
When the abandoned trailer was discovered on a remote road in San Antonio, 48 migrants were already dead. Another 16 were taken to hospitals, where five subsequently died.
Prosecutors said some migrants had paid up to USD 15,000 each to be smuggled across the US border.
US Attorney Justin Simmons said investigators found clothing that passengers had removed in an attempt to cool themselves, along with claw marks on the trailer's walls, indicating their desperate efforts to escape.
Twenty-one of the victims were from Guatemala, Simmons said.
Miranda-Orozco was arrested in Guatemala in 2024 and extradited to the United States the following year. He pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to bring a migrant into the US resulting in death, aiding and abetting migrant smuggling resulting in death, and aiding and abetting migrant smuggling resulting in serious bodily injury.
Guatemalan prosecutors played an important role in securing convictions in the case, officials said. Guatemalan Attorney General Gabriel García Luna attended Tuesday's news conference in Texas.
Several other defendants have also been convicted in connection with the smuggling operation. Felipe Orduna-Torres, identified by prosecutors as the leader of the operation in the United States, was sentenced to life imprisonment last year. His top assistant, Armando Gonzales-Ortega, received an 83-year prison sentence.
Sentencing dates have been scheduled for additional defendants, including the truck's driver.
The incident remains one of the deadliest human smuggling tragedies involving migrants attempting to cross the US-Mexico border. In a similar incident in 2017, 10 migrants died after being trapped inside a truck parked at a Walmart in San Antonio. In 2003, the bodies of 19 migrants were discovered inside a hot truck southeast of the city.