Official: Truck driver part of smuggling group
ICE agent: Survivors likely to be witnesses, stay in U.S. to testify
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Investigators believe a truck driver accused in the deaths of 10 people found inside a packed, sweltering tractor-trailer is just one member of a larger organization involved in human smuggling that they are looking to identify and dismantle, a U.S. immigration official said Tuesday.
Some of the 29 identified survivors have told authorities they hired smugglers who brought them across the U.S. border, loaded some of them onto trucks that took them to the tractortrailer, and marked them with different colored tape to identify them to various smugglers who would be picking them up.
“We’re certainly not stopping at looking at the driver. We’re trying to investigate and identify the different cogs, the stash houses, the other members, where the money came from,” said Shane Folden, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations office in San Antonio.
The driver, James Matthew Bradley Jr., 60, of Clearwater, Fla., is facing charges of illegally transporting immigrants for financial gain, resulting in death. Bradley could face the death penalty.
Folden said charging Bradley is just the first step in the case as investigators work to find others involved in the scheme, those responsible for facilitating money transfers and bringing the immigrants across the border.
“The ultimate goal is to dismantle the complete organization. You have to look at potential targets and potential related locations, both north and south,” he said.
U.S. authorities are still trying to determine how many people were inside the tractor-trailer because some fled before police arrived, Folden said.
At least some of the survivors are likely to become witnesses and receive consideration to remain in the United States to testify, Folden said.
It’s likely that most if not all of the survivors will be allowed to stay in the country to help authorities in their investigation, said Jeff Vaden, a former federal prosecutor who helped oversee the prosecution of a 2003 smuggling attempt in Victoria, Texas, in which 19 people died.