Guatemalan man sentenced to 30 years in prison for smuggling tragedy that killed 53 people in Texas
A federal judge on Tuesday convicted a Guatemalan man extradited to the United States for his role in a 2022 human smuggling attempt that ended in the deaths of 53 migrants transported in a sweltering tractor-trailer in Texas.
U.S. and Guatemalan prosecutors called the conviction of Rigoberto Román Miranda-Orozco another step toward justice in one of the deadliest smuggling attempts along the U.S.-Mexico border. Miranda-Orozco, 39, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after admitting to arranging the travel and accommodation of two people who died and another who was seriously injured.
Nearly 20 people have been sentenced in the United States and Guatemala since the discovery of the abandoned caravan full of bodies horrified by communities accustomed to seeing their young people leave, trying to flee poverty or violence in Central America and Mexico.
“It was clear that they suffered tremendously during their final hours on this earth,” U.S. Attorney Justin Simmons told reporters at a news conference after the sentencing.
The trailer’s air conditioning malfunctioned and did not blow cool air to those trapped inside during the sweltering three-hour drive in June 2022 from the border city of Laredo to San Antonio, authorities said. Prosecutors said the migrants paid up to $15,000 each to cross the U.S. border.
When the abandoned caravan was opened on a remote San Antonio back road, 48 migrants were dead. Sixteen other people were taken to hospital, where five others died.
Simmons said investigators found clothes the passengers had shed to cool down and claw marks on the walls of the trailer.
“They were literally trying to force their way through,” he said.
Twenty-one of the dead were from Guatemala, Simmons said.
U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia sentenced Miranda-Orozco, who was arrested in Guatemala in 2024 and extradited to the United States the following year.
He pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to bring a migrant to the United States resulting in death, aiding and abetting in bringing a migrant to the United States resulting in death, and aiding and abetting in bringing a migrant to the United States resulting in serious bodily injury, prosecutors said.
Simmons said prosecutors in Guatemala played a critical role in securing the convictions of Miranda Orozco and others. Guatemalan lawyer Gabriel García Luna attended Tuesday’s press conference in Texas.
Last year, Felipe Orduna-Torres, described by prosecutors as the leader of the smuggling operations inside the United States, was sentenced to life in prison in the United States. Armando Gonzales-Ortega, his top aide, was sentenced to 83 years in prison.
Sentencing dates have been set for more people, including the truck driver.
The tragedy is the deadliest among those that have claimed thousands of lives in recent decades as people attempted to cross the U.S. border from Mexico. Ten migrants died in 2017 after being trapped in a truck parked at a Walmart in San Antonio.
In 2003, the bodies of 19 migrants were found in a sweltering truck southeast of San Antonio.
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