Four people have been arrested for their alleged role in a tractor-trailer smuggling incident that left 53 dead and 11 injured.
According to a Department of Homeland Security news release, between December 2021 and June 2022, Riley Covarrubias-Ponce, 30; Felipe Orduna-Torres, 28; Luis Alberto Rivera-Leal, 37; and Armando Gonzales-Ortega, 53, are alleged to have participated in a human smuggling organization which illegally brought adults and children from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico into the United States. The Mexican nationals were arrested in San Antonio, Houston and Marshall, Texas.
“Today’s announcement is another important step in our unprecedented effort against smugglers,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a statement. “These indictments are the direct result of a whole of government effort to prevent these horrific crimes and is the largest campaign of its kind in U.S. history. Human smugglers will do anything to turn a profit, and the Department of Homeland Security will continue to do everything possible to stop them. I am grateful for the leadership of our Homeland Security Investigation team and U.S. Customs and Border Protection for seeking justice for the 53 lives lost last year.”
In June 2022, the San Antonio Police responded to a 911 call regarding an abandoned truck and trailer. At the scene, officers discovered multiple individuals inside the trailer, as well as some on the ground and in nearby brush. Upon arrival, many of the migrants were deceased and others were incapacitated.
The alleged smugglers worked together to transport the migrants by sharing routes, guides, stash houses, trucks, trailers, and transporters to consolidate costs, minimize risks, and maximize profit.
The organization maintained a variety of tractors and trailers for their smuggling operations, some of which were stored at a private parking lot in San Antonio.
The indictment alleges that in the days leading up to June 27, 2022, Covarrubias-Ponce, Orduna-Torres, and others exchanged the names of undocumented individuals who would be smuggled in a tractor-trailer. The four new defendants charged in the superseding indictment allegedly orchestrated the retrieval of an empty tractor-trailer and its corresponding hand-off to the driver on June 27.
The driver, Homero Zamorano Jr. of Elkhart, Texas, was previously charged in a July 2022 indictment along with Christian Martinez, of Palestine, Texas. Orduna-Torres allegedly provided the Laredo, Texas, address at which Zamorano loaded the migrants onto the tractor-trailer. The indictment also alleges that Gonzalez-Ortega traveled to Laredo to meet the tractor-trailer, where at least 66 undocumented individuals, including eight children and one pregnant woman, were loaded into the back to be smuggled. Martinez, Covarrubias-Ponce, Orduna-Torres, Rivera-Leal, and Gonzales-Ortega then allegedly coordinated, facilitated, passed messages, and kept each other updated on the tractor-trailer’s progress.
Some of the defendants charged were allegedly aware that the trailer’s air-conditioning unit was malfunctioning and would not blow any cool air to the migrants inside. When members of the organization met the tractor-trailer at the end of its nearly three-hour journey to San Antonio, they opened the doors to find 48 of the migrants, including the pregnant woman, were already dead. Sixteen of the undocumented individuals were transported to hospitals, and five of them died there. LL
Staff writer Ryan Witkowski contributed to this report.
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