Feds: Danbury woman charged in Vermont with transporting migrants, one of whom died

BURLINGTON, VT. — Federal authorities have arrested a Danbury woman accused of transporting three migrants after they walked across the U.S.-Canada border in upstate Vermont over the weekend.

On Sunday, the three individuals were spotted on camera crossing the border south into the U.S. near Goodall Road in Derby, Vt., the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont said.

U.S. Border Patrol agents then pulled over a car with Connecticut plates that had stopped on the road where the migrants would have emerged from the woods. The car blinked its lights “and then accelerated quickly,” the office said in a news release.

“In close proximity to the vehicle stop, Border Patrol Agents saw three individuals standing on the side of the road,” the U.S. attorney office said. “One of the individuals was clutching a tree and appeared to be in distress.”

The other two individuals fled toward Canada while the person holding onto the tree collapsed, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

“Border Patrol Agents rendered aid to the individual who collapsed” until medics arrived and took the individual to the hospital, where they died early Monday morning.

The release did not identify the person who died, and said the cause of death “has not been determined.”

The Danbury woman charged by federal authorities was a passenger in the car pulled over by authorities. The U.S. attorney’s office identified her as 31-year-old Maria Constante-Zamora, an Ecudorian national living in Danbury.

She was arrested on a criminal complaint alleging she had unlawfully attempted “to transport three individuals within the United States,” despite knowing they had entered the country illegally, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

The office said Constante-Zamora made an initial appearance in United States District Court in Burlington. If convicted, she faces up to five years in prison.

She remains in the custody of the U.S. Marshals, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

One of the individuals who fled during the traffic stop was later apprehended, the office said. He was ordered detained by the government as a witness.