Man pleads guilty in deaths of 53 migrants
A Texas man has agreed to plead guilty for his role in a human smuggling attempt that left 53 immigrants dead in San Antonio last year.
One of the first to be arrested as a result, Christian Martinez, of Palestine, was a middleman in an operation that led to what officials have called the worst mass death caused by human smuggling in U.S. history.
He has agreed to plead guilty to two counts of conspiracy to transport undocumented immigrants resulting in death and two counts of conspiracy to transport undocumented immigrants resulting in serious injury, court records show. His plea hearing could come as soon as today.
Martinez, 29, worked with truckers to pick up loads of immigrants and transport them in tractor-trailers from Laredo to San Antonio or farther inland.
On June 27, 2022, Martinez drove Homero Zamorano Jr., 47, of Elkhart in East Texas, to a gas station in San Antonio, where a tractor-trailer awaited. Zamorano drove the rig to Laredo to a pickup location that Martinez had been provided by other members of the organization.
There, group members loaded the trailer with at least 66 undocumented migrants from Mexico, Guatermala and Honduras, including eight children and one pregnant woman, court records show.
Another member of the smuggling ring followed the rig as Zamorano drove it for three hours to San Antonio, according to court records. The rig passed the Border Patrol checkpoint north of Laredo and was not checked by agents.
Court records filed at the start of the case said the trailer’s cooling system may have failed during the trip, but more recent court documents say it didn’t work to begin with and that some in the organization were aware of this.
“As the temperature inside the trailer rose, chaos ensued,” a federal indictment in the case states. “Some aliens screamed and banged on the walls for help. Some passed out, unconscious. Others clawed at the sides of the trailer attempting to escape.”
The trailer stopped at a prearranged location on Quintana Road on the Southwest Side, where others were to meet it, but it was abandoned instead.
Zamorano, allegedly high on drugs, pretended to be one of the migrants and was found nearby. After being hospitalized for a few days, he was arrested and has been in custody since.
Police called to the scene found more than 45 immigrants dead from heat-related injuries after being locked inside without water. The others were hospitalized. The death toll rose to 53 within days. Eleven survived.
Last summer, on the first anniversary of the incident, federal prosecutors charged four more people: Riley Covarrubias-ponce, also known as Rrili, or Rilay, 30; Felipe Orduna-torres, also known as Cholo, Chuequito/ Chuekito, and Negro, 28; Luis Alberto
Rivera-leal, known as Cowboy, 37; and Armando Gonzales-ortega, also known as El Don or Don Gon, 53.
Between December 2021 and June 2022, all six defendants are alleged to have helped smuggle or illegally transport adults and children into the United States, according to the indictment.
They worked together to transport the migrants by sharing routes, guides, stash houses, trucks, trailers and transporters to consolidate costs, minimize risks and maximize profit, the indictment said. The organization maintained a variety of tractors and trailers for their smuggling operations, some stored at a private parking lot in San Antonio, the indictment added.
Before his arrest in June 2022, Martinez had been under investigation by Homeland Security Investigations for other large immigrant loads that were found at the Border Patrol checkpoint north of Laredo, court records state.
Martinez faces up to life in prison for the counts resulting in death and up to 20 years in prison for the charges resulting in serious bodily injury. The other defendants await trial behind bars.