Eleven people were indicted this week for allegedly participating in a years-long human smuggling operation that left seven illegal migrants dead in May after they were trapped for hours inside an unventilated shipping container in Texas.
Prosecutors say the migrants were loaded into the container near Del Rio before it was transported by train across the state. Six were later found dead inside it in Laredo and a seventh was discovered near railroad tracks at the San Antonio stop, according to authorities.
The victims — four Mexican nationals and three Honduran nationals — had no chance of escape because the container could not be opened from the inside, according to prosecutors.
“The ultimate destination for these aliens who began their journey in Del Rio was likely San Antonio. Once the train got to San Antonio, this alien smuggling organization that facilitated the movement of these individuals opened the train car doors,” U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons said at a press conference on Friday.
“There was one individual inside that then fell out of the car. They left that individual for dead there by the tracks in San Antonio, closed the door to the container and sent the train on its way, the train ultimately ending up in Laredo, Texas, where the other six bodies were found,” Simmons added.
One of the victims was a 14-year-old child, while another individual inside the car “frantically contacted their family as they were dying from the sweltering heat in that container,” Simmons said.
The 11 defendants — four of them from the U.S. and seven from either Mexico, Honduras or Guatemala — allegedly ran a human smuggling organization from around April 2023 until May 2026, according to the indictment.
The group allegedly used cargo trains to get migrants further into the interior of the U.S. after getting them across the border, per the indictment.
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Prosecutors allege that toward the end of April this year, the organization began facilitating the travel of the group of seven migrants who would later die in the shipping container.
Each of the victims paid the smugglers between $1,500 and $10,000 to be transported from Acuña, Mexico, into the U.S., according to the indictment.
On the afternoon of May 9, the migrants made it into Del Rio, where the smugglers allegedly used a bolt cutter to snap the lock off a Conex shipping container that was aboard a stationary Union Pacific train, prosecutors said.
Once inside the container, the migrants were dealing with outside temperatures of 88 to 92 degrees Fahrenheit, according to investigators.
The train traveled along U.S. 90 to San Antonio, about 150 miles away from Del Rio, where the smugglers caught up with the migrants and found them “in peril,” prosecutors said.
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According to the indictment, the smugglers that were there allegedly left one of the migrants who had already died near the railroad tracks before abandoning the rest of the migrants inside the shipping container as it traveled to Laredo.
The next day, a worker at the Union Pacific Railyard in Laredo saw a leg sticking out of the container, leading to the discovery of the dead migrants, the indictment said.
San Antonio authorities later discovered the body of the migrant who had been left by the railroad tracks, prosecutors said.
Nine of the 11 people charged in connection with the smuggling and the deaths of the migrants have been arrested and are now in federal custody.
Mayra Alejandra Huerta, 32, of Del Rio, was the first to be arrested on May 12.
Last week, eight other defendants charged in the indictment were arrested in central and south Texas as part of a Homeland Security Task Force operation.
Those arrested from the U.S. were Edson Alejandro Perez, 18, of Del Rio; and Eric Hernandez, 40, of Eagle Pass, Texas.
Another two defendants arrested were from Honduras — Jonas Ulloa-Aguilera, 25, and Franklin Williams Ayala Aguilera, 30.
Three more were from Mexico — Maria Norma Neri de Moran, 56; Damian Huerta Analucas, 55; and Rosario Cristal Lopez-Saldana, 26.
Finally, Pascual Raymundo Loarca, 34, of Guatemala, was also arrested in the Homeland Security operation.
Two of those charged remain at large, including 37-year-old Karina Garcia of Del Rio and 35-year-old Seferino Huerta-Casillas of Mexico.
All the defendants were charged with one count of conspiracy to transport illegal aliens resulting in death and one count of aiding and abetting transport of illegal aliens resulting in death. They face a maximum of life in prison.
