San Antonio-Dos smuggers condemned by federal positions in relation to the death of 53 migrants found in the back of a suffocating tractor trailer in Texas in 2022 face life imprisonment when they are scheduled to be sentenced on Friday.
Felipe Orduna-Torres and Armando Gonzales-Ortega will be the first of several defendants sentenced to the tragedy of San Antonio, who remains the most deadly human smuggling attempt in the nation through the border between the United States and Mexico. A jury condemned men in March for being part of a conspiracy of human smuggling that resulted in death and injuries.
Prosecutors described Orduna-Torres as the leader of the smuggling operation within the United States and Gonzales-Ortega as their main assistant.
The immigrants had come from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico and had paid between $ 12,000 and $ 15,000 each to be smuggled in the United States, according to an accusation in the case. They had reached the border city of Texas de Laredo when they were placed in a broken air-conditioning tractor for a three-hour trip to San Antonio.
As the temperature increased inside the trailer, those inside shouted and hit the walls of the trailer in search of help or tried to collect, the researchers said. Most finally passed out. When the trailer opened in San Antonio, 48 people were already dead. Another 16 were taken to the hospitals, where five more died. The dead included six children and a pregnant woman.
The researchers said that Orduna-Torres and Gonzales-Ortega worked with human smuggling operations in Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, and shared routes, guides, height houses, trucks and trailers. Orduna-Torres provided the address in Laredo, where they would be collected, and González-Ortega met them there.
Five other men declared themselves guilty of charges for serious crimes in the case of smuggling, including the homero zamorano truck Jr. truck, who was found hidden near the trailer in some shrubs. Zamorano faces life imprisonment when sentenced in December. The other defendants are scheduled to be sentenced at the end of this year.
The incident is the deadliest among the tragedies that have gained thousands of lives in recent decades as people try to cross the border of the United States from Mexico. Ten immigrants died in 2017 after they were trapped inside a truck parked in a Walmart store in San Antonio. In 2003, the bodies of 19 immigrants were found in a suffocating truck southeast of San Antonio.
