Jurors on Tuesday came back with a guilty verdict for the alleged coordinator and leader of the nation’s deadliest human smuggling tragedy, which left 53 dead in 2022.
The defendants, Felipe Orduna-Torres and Armando Gonzales-Ortega, were both found guilty on the same charges — conspiracy to transport aliens resulting in death causing serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy.
After a two-week trial and nearly three hours of deliberation, the jury returned Tuesday afternoon with two guilty verdicts. U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia scheduled their sentencing hearing for June 27, which will mark three years since the sweltering hot tractor-trailer was abandoned on Quintana Road in South Bexar County.
“Your liberty, if any, will be determined on that same day,” Garcia said. “It’s the same day that 53 persons died, well actually one of the females was pregnant, so it was actually 54 people that died.”
Throughout the trial, survivors of the deadly smuggling and medical experts took the stand to testify about the horrors immigrants endured in the last hours of their lives.
Orduna-Torres and Gonzales-Ortega face sentences of up to life in prison.
The deceased victims included migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico. A pregnant mother was among the 47 adults and six children who were killed, and 11 others were injured as a result of the inhumane conditions they were placed in.
“They were in the back of a tractor-trailer being transported from Laredo to San Antonio during a hot, summer month. After that three-hour drive, after these individuals had traveled from South America and Central America and made it successfully into the United States, were then placed in horrific conditions for the last few hours they lived,” said acting U.S. Attorney Margaret Leachman for the Western District of Texas, during a press conference following the trial.
Matthew Galeotti, acting head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said the investigation into the June 27, 2022 smuggling incident has not been completed.
The smuggling operation is part of a vast transnational network of smugglers in the U.S. Eight members of this network have been convicted for roles related to the case in similar events, he said.
Of those charged in the U.S., six have been convicted, one remains a fugitive and the last one has been indicted to the U.S. to face charges.
“The goal is to eliminate the surge of human smuggling,” he said. “In just the past seven weeks, the department has charged more than 760 defendants involved in human smuggling, and we’re not done yet. Not even by a longshot.”
Rigoberto Román Miranda Orozco, the 47-year-old Guatemalan national extradited to the U.S. and charged for recruiting four immigrants inside the trailer, three of whom died, made his first federal court appearance on Monday and is scheduled for a detention hearing on Thursday, Galeotti said. He faces up to life in prison.
Officials said that the 11 migrants who survived are still in the U.S. and were granted U Visa applications, which provide a pathway to permanent legal status and allow them to remain in the country legally while they go through the process, which could take more than a decade.
“The human smuggling organization operated for a substantial period of time, transporting numerous people into the U.S. since 2020,” Leachman said. “These individuals worked together and with others, both in the U.S., in Guatemala, in Mexico and in Honduras to illegally smuggle adults and children.”
