Smuggler Gets 30 Years for Role in Deaths of 53 Migrants in Texas

The Texas Tribune

SAN ANTONIO, TX — A federal judge this week sentenced a Guatemalan man to 30 years in prison for his role in the deaths of 53 immigrants found inside a tractor-trailer four years ago in San Antonio. Law enforcement officials described the tragedy as the “country’s deadliest human smuggling event.”

U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia sentenced Rigoberto Ramon Miranda-Orozco on Tuesday in San Antonio. In 2024, a federal grand jury indictedMiranda-Orozco on five counts of conspiring and aiding and abetting to smuggle people to the U.S., resulting in death and injury. With the help of Guatemalan law enforcement officials, Miranda-Orozco was extradited to the U.S. the following year.

Miranda-Orozco pleaded guilty to the charges in July. 

“This sentencing delivers a measure of accountability for a tragedy that claimed 53 lives and devastated multiple families,” said John A. Condon, Homeland Security Investigations acting executive associate director.

According to the Associated Press, nearly 20 people in the U.S. and Guatemala have been convicted for their roles in the deaths of the migrants, who included eight children and one pregnant woman.

A total of 66 people had been loaded into a 53-foot-long trailer that summer when an air conditioning unit malfunctioned. Forty-eight immigrants were found dead at the scene and five died later at a hospital. The majority of the people were from Mexico and the others from Guatemala and Honduras. Two of Miranda-Orozco’s clients died and a third person “survived after a lengthy hospital stay,” according to the Department of Justice.

According to Miranda-Orozco’s indictment, between May and December 2022, he was part of a human smuggling organization in which people paid smugglers between $12,000 and $15,000 to get transported from Central America or Mexico to the U.S.

In the days leading up to the June 27, 2022, tragedy, the smuggling organization had transported the migrants across the Texas-Mexico border. After they crossed, the smugglers loaded 66 people into the trailer and demanded that the immigrants give up their cellphones, the indictment says.

The smugglers then dispensed an unknown powder in the trailer to mask the scent of humans from K-9s at U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints, according to the indictment. The driver transported the migrants on Interstate 35 toward San Antonio when the trailer’s air conditioner stopped working.

“As the temperature inside the trailer rose, chaos ensued,” according to the indictment. Some of the people “screamed and banged on the walls for help. Some passed out unconscious. Others clawed at the sides of the trailer attempting to escape.”

According to the AP, Miranda-Orozco’s attorney, Alfonso Cabanas Jr., called the sentence “very tough.” He said his client was in Guatemala at the time and had no control over the type of transportation the migrants would take to San Antonio, nor did he know the air conditioning was malfunctioning, the AP reported.

Cabanas said he doesn’t think harsh punishments will “make a dent” in such operations, the AP reported.

“What we do need is comprehensive immigration reform,” Cabanas said.