(Headline USA)—Two smugglers convicted of federal charges in connection with the deaths of 53 migrants found in the back of a sweltering tractor-trailer in Texas in 2022 face up to life in prison when they are scheduled to be sentenced Friday.
Felipe Orduna-Torres and Armando Gonzales-Ortega are to be the first of several defendants sentenced in the San Antonio incident, which remains the nation’s deadliest human smuggling attempt across the U.S.-Mexico border. A jury convicted the men in March of being part of a human smuggling conspiracy that resulted in death and injury.
Prosecutors described Orduna-Torres as the leader of the smuggling operation inside the U.S. and Gonzales-Ortega as his top assistant.
The immigrants had come from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico and had paid between $12,000 and $15,000 each to be smuggled into the United States, according to an indictment in the case. They had made it as far as the Texas border city of Laredo when they were placed into a tractor-trailer with broken air conditioning for a three-hour drive to San Antonio.
As the temperature rose inside the trailer, those inside screamed and banged the walls of the trailer for help or tried to claw their way out, investigators said. Most eventually passed out. When the trailer was opened in San Antonio, 48 people were already dead. Another 16 were taken to hospitals, where five more died. The dead included six children and a pregnant woman.
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