San Antonio officials investigating the largest deadly human smuggling tragedy that left 53 migrants dead in 2022 on Thursday announced that the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security and Guatemalan law enforcement arrested seven suspects allegedly involved in recruiting people for smugglers in Guatemala.
These arrests come two years after the tragedy on the city’s South Side and after the city built a memorial to honor the migrants.
Seven others have already been arrested. Four of them have pleaded guilty and three are set for trial on Oct. 21.
According to court documents, the human smugglers were aware the trailer’s air-conditioning unit didn’t work throughout the three-hour ride from Laredo to San Antonio.
At a press conference in San Antonio, the U.S. Attorney’s Office Western District of Texas announced the indictment and extradition of Rigoberto Román Miranda Orozco, a 47-year-old Guatemalan national who was arrested after evidence directly connected him to four migrants who were inside the unventilated tractor-trailer on June 27, 2022, officials said.
The six other suspects will be prosecuted in Guatemala.
“We go where the evidence takes us,” Ian Hanna, co-director of Joint Task Force Alpha, part of the DOJ, which worked to investigate the suspects with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas and Guatemalan authorities, who issued several search and arrest warrants in Guatemala.
Officials would not confirm they didn’t have sufficient evidence to connect them to organizing the smuggling of the 53 migrants who died.
Miranda Orozco is accused of conspiring with a network to facilitate the smuggling of Guatemalan nationals and charging them between $2,000 and $15,000. Three who paid to get to the U.S. died in that tractor-trailer, officials said. A fourth person survived but suffered severe injuries.
The indictment charges Miranda Orozco with six counts related to migrant smuggling resulting in death or serious bodily injury. He faces life in prison.
Officials discovered the tractor-trailer filled with 53 migrants in 2022, a year that San Antonio saw record waves of migration into Texas at the southwest border.
When they opened the doors, 48 people were already dead — among them a pregnant woman and at least six children. Five more people died at San Antonio hospitals from the extreme heat they endured for hours. And 11 survived with major injuries.
Of the migrants killed, 21 were citizens of Guatemala, 26 were from Mexico and six were Honduran.
As investigations into the crime continue, evidence from Guatemalan authorities has helped U.S. officials indict more people in connection with the victims’ deaths.
Jaime Esparza, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, said the U.S. has requested Miranda Orozco’s extradition to the U.S.
“We will prosecute Miranda Orozco as aggressively as possible as we seek justice for those who perished and for those who were injured,” Esparza said.
“If you dedicate yourself to this type of contraband, if you dedicate yourself to making profits off of people’s misery, and if you think you’re safe because you’re not in the U.S., you’re wrong,” Hanna said in a message to smugglers in Spanish.
“We’ll find you, we’ll investigate you, and with our partners abroad, we’ll extradite you to the U.S. to face justice here.”
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar spoke of the harrowing scenes of smuggled migrants through San Antonio in a two-minute speech on the main stage at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday.
