San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
2 SENTENCED TO PRISON IN SMUGGLING DEATHS OF 3
Trio of sisters from Mexico died in storm on trek into the U.S.
In rugged terrain near Mount Laguna sits a shrine to the Virgen de Guadalupe. Border Patrol agents call a nearby foot path the “Shrine Trail,” where undocumented immigrants making the arduous trek through the area leave rosaries draped over a stick that crosses the front of the altar. According to prosecutors, immigrants and the smugglers who bring them across the border “visit this shrine before they descend the north side of the mountain and thus no longer have Mexico in their view — as if there is no turning back.”
In February 2020, three sisters from Oaxaca were making the trip, led by two brothers from Chihuahua who were smuggling them, when a snowstorm blew through, stranding the illprepared group. All three sisters died of hypothermia about 300 yards from the Virgin Mary shrine.
On Friday, a federal judge sentenced the brothers — 38-year-old Cecilio Rios-quiñones and 23-yearold Ricardo Rios-quiñones — to 5 ½ years each in prison for their roles in the sisters’ deaths.
The brothers pleaded guilty in August to felony charges of conspiracy and two counts relating to human smuggling in connection with the deaths of Juana Santos Arce, 35, Margarita Santos Arce, 32, and Paula Santos Arce, 29.
Family members told media outlets in Mexico that for lack of work and money, the sisters, who hailed from a small mountain town in central Oaxaca, were trying to achieve “el sueño americano” — the American dream.
U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo called their Feb. 10, 2020, deaths one of the worst human smuggling scenarios she’d seen in 15 years as a judge, according to prosecutors.
“It is tragic that someone wants to come here to work and dies,” Bencivengo said, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California. “But it is more tragic that there are people who benefit from this, who treat them like cargo.” Court documents in the case outline how both sets of siblings were searching for better lives for their large, poor families in their rural hometowns, but were not well-prepared for the multi-day trek through rain and snow. The court papers also document how an elite Border Patrol search-andrescue team also struggled with grueling elements in a race against time to try to save the last surviving sister.
Defense attorney Kenneth Troiano described the agents’ rescue efforts as “no less than heroic.”
According to sentencing documents, the Santos Arce sisters frequently came to the United States for agricultural work, mostly picking strawberries in the Northwest. In early 2020, the sisters were again planning to find work in the U.S. and made their way to Tijuana, along with a nephew and Paula’s 18-month-old daughter, where they agreed to pay smugglers $8,500 per person to be led across the border.
Smugglers brought the toddler across the border separately and sent the nephew with a different group. The three sisters were sent with the Riosquiñones brothers as guides.
Prosecutors contended that both brothers had previous smuggling experience, but attorneys for the men claimed in sentencing memos that Ricardo had made the trip just one time with another group, to learn the route, while Cecilio had never smuggled anyone.
They’d been recruited as foot guides, according to their attorneys, by a group that employed a third brother as a smuggler. That brother, Rito, pleaded guilty last month in a separate federal human smuggling case.
Cecilio, Ricardo and the sisters set off Feb. 9 knowing it would be a multi-day journey crossing the border near Campo and continuing across a highway, an interstate and into the rugged mountain terrain to the “Shrine Trail.” The group set off in the rain, and on the second day, after already trekking at least 16 miles into higher elevation, became caught in a snowstorm.
Prosecutors said the group did not have proper clothing and supplies to survive the harsh weather, and they stopped near a large boulder, where “the sisters no longer could continue — each one slowly started dying due to the effects of hypothermia.” Defense attorneys said the men huddled with the women, trying to keep them warm until the early afternoon of Feb. 10, when they hiked to a spot where they could get cellphone reception to call 911.
By that time, one of the sisters was dead, and a second sister died by the time Border Patrol agents reached the group about three hours later.
A photo from the scene shows the agents working to try to save Juana on a steep, snow-covered hill — an area where the conditions and terrain made it too difficult for a helicopter to hoist her away. The agents next tried to carry Juana, but the path was too steep and slippery.
Instead, they began preparations to camp out overnight in an attempt to keep the eldest sister alive, but as night fell, the “agents realized they too were beginning to experience the effects of hypothermia and started calling for reinforcements,” according to prosecutors. A San Diego Firerescue Department helicopter was unable to hoist the injured woman, so a paramedic from the aircraft dropped onto the mountain to help care for her. Soon thereafter, she died.
It wasn’t until later that night, as Border Patrol agents studied the victims’ Mexican voting cards, that authorities realized they were sisters.
“The sad truth is that Mr. (Cecilio) Rios-quiñones will forever live with the guilt of having been part of a criminal act that killed three women,” his attorney, Michelle Betancourt, wrote in a sentencing memo. “(He) regrets the tremendous loss his actions caused the Santos family.”
Ricardo Rios-quiñones wrote in a letter to the judge: “I am a man of faith and I am very remorseful for what I did ... We weren’t prepared for the storm and I would have never participated in this if I would have known someone would end up hurt or dead. I feel terrible for what happened.”