Deadly transport: More trucks are smuggling migrants in trailers

LAREDO, Texas — The temperature in Laredo had reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit that day. The truck's trailer was closed and had no refrigeration, according to the driver who referred to himself as John. He avoided thinking about the people inside the trailer. “They are no longer human to me … because if you see them like that, you’re going to mortify yourself and that weakness affects you," said John, whose name was being withheld because he fears reprisals from the criminal group that hired him. He was told he would earn $100,000 for transporting the group of undocumented migrants who were inside the stifling trailer. As he took off to start the three-hour drive from Laredo to San Antonio in early June 2020, he found himself almost surrounded by local and federal police. Investigators from the Department of Homeland Security were on the trail of a human smuggling organization and had the truck under surveillance, according to court documents in the case reviewed by Noticias Telemundo. The authorities found 46 migrants inside the trailer, including several from Mexico who said they had crossed the border days before. John pleaded guilty in court to transferring undocumented persons and was sentenced to 41 months in prison. by Taboola Sponsored Stories LUCKYLAND SLOTS Sign Up and Get 7,777 Gold Coins and Free 10 Sweep Coins. No Purchase Required. POLITICS SIMULATION What if the American decline becomes reality? Game simulates political scenarios AD BY PRACTICEPANTHER The Leader in All-in-One Legal Practice Management We’re thrilled to announce that PracticePanther has been named a leader on the G2 report in the categories of legal case management software and legal billing 5 years in a row! Why do customers love us? ⭐ 91% of reviewers find PracticePanther to be easy to use ⭐ 93% of customers believe... SEE MORE Police and other first responders work the scene where officials say dozens of people have been found dead and multiple others were taken to hospitals with heat-related illnesses after a semitrailer containing suspected migrants was found, Monday, June 27, 2022, in San Antonio. Police and other first responders work the scene where dozens of people were found dead inside a truck in San Antonio in 2022. A total of 53 adults and children died from that smuggling incident. Eric Gay / AP file He told Noticias Telemundo he felt as if he had "sold his soul" and was afraid his wife would leave him. John spent 25 months in jail and was released on parole in August 2022. 'People are the new drug' Human smuggling is on the rise, according to current and former officials who spoke to Noticias Telemundo. “People are the new drug — there is an opportunity to make much more money than in drugs. And really the punishment is not so severe when they are people. It is less risky,” John said. “If they catch you with a kilo of cocaine it’s 20 years. ... They gave me three and a half years. If you know that, it becomes easier for you,” he said. Of all the smuggling cases analyzed by Noticias Telemundo, more than half occurred in or near Laredo, primarily at the Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 35 north of the city. This highway is the main artery for commercial traffic to the interior of the country, and between 14,000 and 19,000 vehicles a day are currently inspected at this checkpoint, according to experts. Laredo, a border city of 256,000 and the largest port by volume of commercial land traffic in North America, is the epicenter of these operations. AD BY PRACTICEPANTHER Learn why tens of thousands of lawyers choose PracticePanther to manage their firm more efficiently! Unlock your law firm’s full potential with the leader in all-in-one legal practice management. PracticePanther automates your firm’s most time-consuming administrative tasks, empowering you to more effectively serve your clients and grow your book of business. Try it for yourself at:... SEE MORE Arizona border agents found nine migrants traveling concealed in a cattle trailer, on the mezzanine of the trailer, lying on cardboard and dirt. on Oct. 5, 2022. Arizona border agents found nine people concealed on the mezzanine of a cattle trailer, lying amid cardboard and dirt in 2022.U.S. Border Patrol file There are also hundreds of transport companies operating in the city, as well as warehouses, distribution centers, large parking lots and service centers full of trucks. Noticias Telemundo analyzed about one hundred court cases involving trucks transporting migrants in the last five years, most of them in Texas. On average, the drivers received prison sentences of about three and a half years. They do vary depending on the seriousness of the crime and the driver’s background. James Matthew Bradley was sentenced to life in prison for the death of 10 migrants in San Antonio in 2017. Because of strict controls at border ports, which use X-ray imaging systems, it's difficult for trucks to smuggle people from Mexico into the U.S. So the smuggling occurs mainly on U.S. soil once people have crossed the border. The greatest risk is for the migrants, who don't always get to their intended destinations alive. “We don’t know how many people have died, they let them die and we don’t know what they do with their bodies,” said Arístides Jiménez, a former special agent for Homeland Security Investigations. On June 27, 2022, weeks before John was released from prison, 53 people died trapped in a truck traveling from Laredo to San Antonio, the worst human smuggling tragedy in U.S. history. The driver, Homero Zamorano Jr., pleaded not guilty and will be tried in September. U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to inquiries from Noticias Telemundo on how many trucks carrying migrants are stopped each year. But so far this year, border agents in the Rio Grande Valley sector have intercepted more than a hundred trucks that were illegally transporting migrants. The lack of resources and personnel to check all the vehicles, the high cost of screening commercial traffic and the aggressiveness of criminal groups — who even recruit drivers who don't know how to drive trucks — serve as fuel driving this macabre and often deadly business, according to official documents and interviews. ‘There we saw death' In most cases, migrants don't know that they will be transferred in trailers until they get into the containers where, after paying thousands of dollars and suffering threats from coyotes, they travel in the dark for hours, with almost no oxygen, amid temperatures that can reach 140 degrees Fahrenheit and with no possibility of opening the doors, according to Jiménez. “Most of the time they don’t give them a chance to react. ... Once the trailer is closed there’s no way out," Jiménez said. “People who have lost their lives, many times you notice their hands and fingers bleeding because they tried to open a hole in the wood looking for air." Ecuadorian Enzon Eras, 36, made a brutal journey aboard several trailers in 2005, first through Mexico and then from Laredo to San Antonio, as he told Noticias Telemundo from Spain, where he now lives with his family. Image taken by an X-ray machine that reveals the presence of people inside a trailer. Experts believe that it is necessary to equip checkpoints on border roads with more technology. Image taken by an X-ray machine that reveals the presence of people inside a trailer. Experts believe that it is necessary to equip checkpoints on border roads with more technology.U.S. Border Patrol “We had to get to Nuevo Laredo,” he said, “They had ropes and people were standing. That trailer had ventilation. But I don’t know what happened. ... That air went out. ... People began to despair, to jump, to want to break the roof of the trailer. We reached and we couldn’t break through the roof. We pushed people to break it, to make a hole at the top, it was impossible .” "There we saw death," he said. A deadly — and lucrative — business Both truckers and investigators say drug cartels in Mexico have taken over on the U.S. side. “It is a business in which they can make a lot of money. ... They are organizing everything like never before,” said Roberto Balli, a Laredo attorney who each year defends between 10 and 20 arrested truckers. According to Balli, between 2021 and 2022 the number of people transported in each truck has also increased. “We are seeing up to 100 or 150 people in a box and that is something that has not been seen before,” he said. According to Erik Estrada, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety, “We have seen this year that there has been an increase in this type of crime." This upward trend was confirmed by Timothy J. Tubbs, former deputy special agent for Homeland Security Investigations who was in charge in Laredo for five years and until he retired in January 2022. A long line of tractor trailers await entry into the U.S. from Mexico at the Otay Mesa, Calif., port of entry, June 22, 2016. A long line of tractor trailers await entry into the U.S. from Mexico at the Otay Mesa, Calif., port of entry, in 2016. Glenn Fawcett / U.S. Border Patrol file "The trailers have always been used, but not as much as now,” said Tubbs. Balli believes that there are now fewer Texan drivers willing to do this type of work, the result of an aggressive deterrence campaign by authorities who have warned truckers they could lose their commercial licenses — which are expensive and difficult to get — if they're convicted of transporting migrants illegally. But smugglers take advantage of drivers' economic situations. In December 2021, Crispín de la Rosa, a driver who was stopped in Sarita, Texas, with 24 migrants in a trailer that was also carrying watermelons, told agents that he agreed to drive the truck to Houston for $600 because he had been unemployed for months and needed to help his elderly mother, according to court documents. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.