2023-06-28 06:35:22
The Department of Justice of the United States announced this Tuesday the arrest of four Mexicans in various parts of Texas for their alleged involvement in a human trafficking operation, which ended with the death a year ago of 53 migrants due to lack of oxygen and with 11 people with symptoms of suffocation.
According to a statement, the arrests of Riley Covarrubias-Ponce, 30; Felipe Orduna-Torres, 28; Luis Alberto Rivera-Leal, 37; and Armando Gonzales-Ortega, 53, occurred in San Antonio, Houston and Marshall, Texas.
Court documents in the US indicate that the four allegedly participated between December 2021 and June 2022 in a human trafficking organization that irregularly brought adults and minors from Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras to US soil.
The alleged smugglers coordinated among themselves to transport the migrants by sharing routes, guides, hideouts and trucks, among others, to minimize risk and maximize profit, the Justice Department said.
The group used trailers for their operations, some of which were stored in a private garage in San Antonio.
The indictment states that the days before June 27, 2022, Covarrubias-Ponce, Orduña-Torres and other smugglers exchanged the names of the undocumented migrants who were going to be transported in a truck.
The four defendants organized the recovery of an empty trailer that they delivered to a driver, Homero Zamorano, previously accused by the US Justice, who was given an address in Laredo (Texas) to pick up the people he was going to transport.
66 irregular migrants got into the vehicle, including eight minors and a pregnant woman. At all times the defendants allegedly coordinated, facilitated, and informed each other of the trailer’s movements.
According to the US, some of the defendants knew that the truck’s air conditioning was not working well and did nothing to provide fresh air to the migrants inside.
When members of the smuggling organization received the trailer in San Antonio after three hours of travel and opened the doors of the vehicle, they found that 48 people had died, including the pregnant woman.
In addition, 16 migrants had to be hospitalized, of which five lost their lives during their admission to a health center.
(AP)
Prosecutor Jaime Esparza of the Western District of Texas noted in the note that “dozens of desperate and vulnerable men, women and children placed their trust in traffickers, who abandoned them in a closed trailer to perish in the merciless summer of South Texas. “.
Each defendant faces conspiracy charges to transport illegal immigrants resulting in death and conspiracy to transport illegal immigrants resulting in serious bodily injury and endangering lives.
If found guilty, they could face life in prison in the US.
At the time, the US authorities reported that temperatures inside the truck exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) and that they found piles of bodies crammed into the vehicle.
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