This Wednesday, the United States Department of Justice announced the capture of four Mexicans in various parts of Texas for their involvement in a human trafficking operation, which ended with the death a year ago of 53 immigrants due to lack of oxygen in the border.
According to the reports from the authorities, the four suspects participated between December 2021 and June 2022 in a human trafficking organization that brought the United States irregularly from Guatemala, Mexico, and Honduras. The suspects were identified as 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.
The traffickers coordinated among themselves to transport the immigrants, sharing routes, guides, hideouts and trucks, among others, to minimize risks and maximize their benefits. Some of the defendants knew that the truck’s air conditioning was not working well and did nothing to provide fresh air for the migrants inside.
The group used trailers for its operations, some of which were stored in a private garage in San Antonio, Texas. According to the Covarrubias-Ponce report, Orduña-Torres and other smugglers exchanged the names of the undocumented migrants who were 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 immigrants got into the vehicle, including eight minors and a pregnant woman. After this action and after three hours of travel, they opened the doors of the vehicle, and found that 48 people had died, including a pregnant woman. 16 immigrants had to be hospitalized, of which five later lost their lives.
With information from EFE
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