WASHINGTON.- Four Mexicans were arrested Monday in Texas for their alleged involvement in the 2022 death of 53 migrants who were traveling overcrowded in the trailer of a truck, the United States Department of Justice reported on Tuesday.
A year ago, 53 migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador died of hyperthermia and acute dehydration while traveling in an unventilated trailer. Only 11 survived.
According to court documents, between December 2021 and June 2022 the four detainees participated in a human smuggling organization that smuggled migrants into the United States, the Justice Department said in a statement Tuesday.
They are Riley Covarrubias Ponce, alias Rrili or Rilay, 30 years old; Felipe Orduña Torres, also known as Cholo, Chuequito or Negro, 28 years old; Luis Alberto Rivera Leal, aka Cowboy, 37, and Armando Gonzáles Ortega, nicknamed El Don or Don Gon, 53, details.
The detainees coordinated to transport the migrants “sharing routes, guides, hiding places, trucks, trailers and carriers” in order to “minimize the risks (for them) and maximize the benefits.”
The organization had several tractors and trailers, some of them parked in a private parking lot in San Antonio, Texas, the department said.
When members of the organization opened the doors of the trailer at the end of a nearly three-hour drive to San Antonio, 48 of the migrants, including a pregnant woman, were dead. Sixteen were taken to hospitals, but five of them died.
According to the indictment, in the days leading up to June 27, 2022, Covarrubias Ponce, Orduña Torres, and others exchanged the names of migrants who were going to enter the country.
The authorities, shortly after the macabre discovery, arrested the driver of the truck, Homero Zamorano, and Christian Martínez.
Apparently the detainees orchestrated the collection of an empty trailer and its delivery to the driver. Some of them “knew that the trailer’s air conditioning unit was malfunctioning,” the statement said.
Those arrested face life imprisonment.
“Human traffickers who endanger people’s lives for profit and break our laws cannot hide for long: We will find them and bring them to justice,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland, quoted in the notice.
“They will do anything to obtain benefits and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will continue to do everything possible to stop them,” said the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, in the same note.
FUENTE: AFP
