After nearly three hours of deliberations, a jury in San Antonio on Tuesday convicted two men for their role in the deaths of 53 undocumented migrants, 47 adults and six children, one of the deadliest migrant smuggling incidents in the nation’s history.
The two defendants, Armando Gonzales-Ortega, 54, and Felipe Orduna-Torres, 29, who were charged with conspiracy to transport undocumented immigrants resulting in death, are facing sentences of life in prison. They are scheduled to be sentenced on June 27, three years after that fateful trip.
The judge presiding over the case, Orlando L. Garcia, told the men that he was counting a total of 54 fatalities because of one of the victims was pregnant at the time.
The trial has brought into stark relief the deadly dangers of human trafficking at a time when President Trump is cracking down on the asylum system and moving to close the border. Mr. Trump has also embraced what he has called the humanitarian side of his aggressive immigration crackdown, stopping the cartel leaders and smugglers who profit off transporting undocumented migrants into the United States.
The gruesome trial in San Antonio highlighted the perils of that trade, even as the president’s policies may make such treacherous avenues to entry more profitable to smugglers, known as coyotes.
The defendants showed no emotion as the jury read the verdict.
On June 27, 2022, the chilling scream of a young woman led witnesses to the grisly discovery of 53 dead and dying migrants who had been trapped inside a sweltering trailer without a working air-conditioner in the middle of the scorching Texas heat. Temperatures inside the 53-foot trailer had reached 150 degrees, the authorities had said.
During the two-week trial, the jury saw dozens of WhatsApp messages that connected the men to a sprawling ring of smugglers that extended from Texas to Guatemala and heard emotional testimony from witnesses, law enforcement officials and survivors. (Eleven migrants survived the trailer’s sweltering temperatures.)
Neither of the men was accused of driving the tractor-trailer, or of being present at the scene where it was discovered on Quintana Road in the outskirts of San Antonio.
The jury also saw video footage of police officers trying frantically to aid survivors amid the piles of badly burned bodies in and around the trailer, which was abandoned by the smugglers once they realized what had happened. The victims came from Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras.
After the jury reached its verdict, federal officials in San Antonio told reporters they would go after every one of the people involved in the deaths.
“The disregard for human life shows how human smugglers prioritize money and profit,” said Craig Larrabee, a special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in San Antonio.
During an hourlong closing argument, Eric Fuchs, an assistant U.S. attorney, walked the jurors through evidence that showed both defendants worked behind the scenes to transport the migrants from Laredo, Texas, to San Antonio. He pointed to more than 400 communications, including text messages and phone calls.
“When the facts meet the law, it’s your duty to find the defendants guilty. When you look at all the evidence, you know that is exactly what we have done here,” he said. “It’s overwhelming.”
Edgardo Rafael Baez, the defendants’ lawyer, spent 40 minutes during closing arguments arguing that the prosecution lacked critical proof, such as fingerprints, video and recordings, connecting his clients to the crime.
“If you look at the evidence, you can see the holes in the case,” Mr. Baez told the jury.
The incident, which President Joseph R. Biden Jr. described at the time as “horrifying and heartbreaking,” came amid a record surge of migration, mostly from Venezuela but also other parts of the world, as people tried to escape political repression, economic downturns and violence in their countries.
Thousands arrived daily, overwhelming border towns and Democratic urban centers such as New York, Chicago and Denver before illegal crossings slowed down in 2024 to their lowest level in decades.
At the height of the crisis, many of the migrants surrendered to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials and pleaded for asylum. But others who knew they would not be admitted legally turned to violent smuggling organizations. Drug cartels, which sought to diversify their income streams as their trade in fentanyl and other drugs came under attack, assumed a large role in such operations.
At least four people of the more than a dozen who have been charged in connection with the case have pleaded guilty. That included Homero Zamorano Jr., who admitted to the authorities that he was the driver of the tractor-trailer. Several others are facing charges in Guatemala.
Two of the defendants’ co-conspirators who agreed to testify in the case told the jury that the ring operated as if it were a corporation, with three distinct layers of responsibilities.
Drivers like Mr. Zamorano was considered to be at the bottom. Mr. Gonzales-Ortega was one of the ring’s coordinators, who oversaw the recruitment of drivers and shadowed the trucks during trips. Mr. Orduna-Torres was an organizer, considered to be in the ring’s top echelon, who decided when to move the human cargo and managed the coordinators.
Not long after beginning his second term, Mr. Trump designated many gangs, cartels and smuggling groups as foreign terrorist organizations, a step that gives the federal government more latitude to impose economic sanctions on those who run organized crime and the players connected to them.
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