Two jailed for life after 53 migrants die in locked truck in Texas
Texas
in 2022.
A federal jury in Texas had found the two men, Felipe Orduna-Torres and Armando Gonzales-Ortega, guilty of various charges at the conclusion of a trial in March. Federal judge Orlando Garcia sentenced Orduna-Torres to life in prison and Gonzales-Ortega to 83 years of incarceration, essentially also a life sentence.
The judge also imposed a $250,000 (€213,300) fine on each of the defendants.
Five other men have also pleaded guilty for their role in the smuggling operation and are scheduled to be sentenced later.
READ MORE
The truck was holding 64 migrants from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador at the time. The vehicle had a broken air conditioner and no water, which amounted to suffocating conditions in the Texas summer.
Only 11 of those who were in the tractor-truck survived an ordeal that grimly illustrated the risks migrants are willing to take to cross the US border.
The migrants had paid the smugglers $12,000 to $15,000 each to be taken across the US border, according to the case's indictment. They were placed in the vehicle in Laredo, a town at the border, and then driven to San Antonio, a three-hour drive away.
[
Essex lorry deaths: Members of Irish-Romanian gang jailed for up to 27 years
Opens in new window
]
As temperatures rose inside the truck, the people inside screamed and banged on the walls. Many eventually passed out. When the truck was found on June 27th, 2022, more than a dozen people were taken to hospital, where five more died.
The men had known the air conditioning in the truck was broken, according to prosecutors. They had discovered dozens of the people inside had died when they opened the back of the truck at the end of the three-hour trip.
'Three years to the day after these two smugglers and their co-conspirators left dozens of men, women and children locked in a sweltering tractor-trailer to die in the Texas summer heat, they learned that they will spend the rest of their lives locked away in a federal prison,' said a statement from the US attorney for the western district of Texas, Justin Simmons.
Prosecutors said that Orduna-Torres was the leader of a group of men who smuggled people from Mexico and South America between December 2021 and June 2022. He and Gonzales-Ortega shared routes, vehicles, stash houses and transporters to 'consolidate costs, minimise risks and maximise profit', according to a statement from the US justice department.
Migrant smuggling to the US, a multibillion-dollar industry, is often run in co-ordination with some of Mexico's most violent cartels. While the number of migrants apprehended at the border has dropped since Donald Trump's second presidency began in January, reports have said people are still being smuggled into the US through methods and routes that are even more dangerous. – Guardian
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
8 hours ago
- Irish Times
Trump's civil fraud fine thrown out by New York appeals court
A New York state appeals court on Thursday threw out an approximately half-billion-dollar penalty that Donald Trump had been ordered to pay after a judge found the US president fraudulently overstated the value of his properties and other assets to bolster his family business. The decision by a five-judge panel of the appellate division in Manhattan represented a defeat for New York attorney general Letitia James, whose office brought the civil fraud lawsuit against Mr Trump in 2022. Ms James's case had been among Mr Trump's biggest legal losses in a slew of lawsuits against him in recent years. Lawyers for Mr Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Ms James's office did not immediately respond to similar requests. READ MORE The appeals court was splintered. Two judges found Mr Trump was properly held liable, and Ms James 'vindicated a public interest' by pursuing her fraud case, but the penalty was an excessive fine that violated the US Constitution. Two other judges also found Ms James had authority to sue, but a new trial was necessary because the trial judge should not have held Mr Trump liable for fraud at the outset. The fifth judge said the case against Mr Trump should have been dismissed. Mr Trump was appealing a judgment entered by judge Arthur Engoron in a state court in Manhattan, following a three-month non-jury trial. Judge Engoron found Mr Trump had inflated his wealth over several years before first becoming president in 2017, to dupe lenders and insurers into providing better terms to the Trump Organization. Mr Trump has denied wrongdoing. His lawyers argued that the penalty was too high and that Ms James had overreached. In February 2024, the judge ordered Mr Trump to pay $454.2 million in penalties plus interest , which has continued to accrue. Mr Trump was personally liable for nearly 98 per cent of the judgment, with his eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, and former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg responsible for the remainder. Referring to Mr Trump and other Trump Organization figures, judge Engoron said their 'complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological'. Judge Engoron also banned Mr Trump and the Trump Organization from applying for loans from banks registered in the state for three years, and effectively barred Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump from running the business for two years. The appeals court put these restrictions on hold during the appeals process, while letting a court-appointed monitor for the Trump Organization continue her work. – Reuters
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
Trump administration better-placed than courts to release Epstein files, says judge
A New York judge has said the Trump administration is in a better position than federal courts to release materials that would satisfy public curiosity about the sex trafficking case of the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In rejecting the justice department's bid to unseal records from the grand jury that indicted Epstein in 2019, Manhattan-based US district judge Richard Berman wrote that the 70-odd pages of materials the grand jury saw paled in comparison to the 100,000 pages the government has from its Epstein investigation, but is not releasing. The judge said the bid to persuade him to unseal the records was an apparent distraction from the justice department's decision in July not to release its files and directly cited another judge's decision earlier this month not to release similar materials from the grand jury that indicted Epstein's long-time girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell . 'The instant grand jury motion appears to be a 'diversion' from the breadth and scope of the Epstein files in the Government's possession,' Judge Berman wrote. The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Judge Berman's decision came as president Donald Trump has faced criticism from his conservative base of supporters and congressional Democrats over the justice department's decision not to release the files from its Epstein investigation. [ Epstein scandal: Letters from famous figures published Opens in new window ] Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. He had pleaded not guilty. His death in jail and his friendships with wealthy and powerful individuals sparked conspiracy theories that other prominent people were involved in his alleged crimes, and that he had been murdered. Mr Trump, a Republican, had campaigned for a second term in 2024 with promises to make public Epstein-related files, and accused Democrats of covering up the truth. But in July, the justice department declined to release any more material from its investigation of the case and said a previously touted Epstein client list did not exist, angering Mr Trump's supporters. To try to quell the discontent, Mr Trump in July instructed attorney general Pam Bondi to seek court approval for the release of grand jury material from Epstein's case. Evidence seen and heard by grand juries, which operate behind closed doors to prevent interference in criminal investigations, cannot be released without a judge's approval. Justice department investigations typically collect more material than prosecutors ultimately present to grand juries. Some of that evidence is at times eventually disclosed to the public during criminal trials. The justice department does not routinely disclose its evidence in cases where a defendant pleads guilty or, like Epstein, never faces trial, but it would not require judicial approval to release such materials. The grand jury that indicted Epstein heard from just one witness, an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and saw a PowerPoint presentation and call logs, Judge Berman wrote. On August 11th, a different Manhattan-based judge, Paul Engelmayer, denied the justice department's request to unseal grand jury testimony and exhibits from Maxwell's case, writing that the material was duplicative of public testimony at her 2021 trial. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence following her conviction for recruiting underage girls for Epstein. 'A member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the government's motion for their unsealing was aimed not at 'transparency' but at diversion - aimed not at full disclosure, but at the illusion of such,' Judge Engelmayer wrote. Maxwell had pleaded not guilty. After losing an appeal, she asked the US Supreme Court to review her case. – Reuters
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Irish Times
Chinese nationals smuggled £9 million of cannabis into Northern Ireland
Two Chinese nationals who smuggled cannabis worth £9 million (€10.4 million) into Northern Ireland hidden in wooden flooring have been jailed. Yudong Ouyang (32) and Gary Hon (26), living in Manchester, were cultivating large crops of cannabis in the city and using heavy-goods vehicles (HGVs) to transport it by ferry to Northern Ireland where they knew they could charge a 'premium price', the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) said. The pair were using encrypted messaging platforms between June, 2019 and February, 2020, where they organised hiding the drugs in large pallets of wooden flooring. The NCA said inner pallets of flooring were hollowed out to create a void where they could hide the drugs before organising shipping to Northern Ireland using a legitimate agent who was unaware of the criminal activity. NCA investigators found there were up to 38 deliveries made by the group from Manchester to Belfast in the nine-month period. Ouyang and Hon sent messages in Mandarin and translations showed that the contents discussed the cannabis trade, warehouse rentals and travel to Northern Ireland. Other messages discussed how to hide the drugs and how they could secrete money when they returned to England. One message stated: 'I put the d(drug) money on me, not in the car, so the sniffing dog could not get the smell.' The NCA said phone evidence also showed Ouyang regularly sent photos of cannabis, cannabis farms, or selfies of him at the farms to the gang. His fingerprints and an invoice in his name were found at a cannabis farm raided as part of the operation. Officers pieced together messages and phone calls with CCTV movements that showed how the group were in touch with each other before attending storage units to move pallets. Despite attempting to appear as a legitimate business, NCA investigators found that pallets were occasionally shipped back from Northern Ireland to Manchester and other locations in England where it is believed the hollow void could be used again for a further export. The standard weight of a pallet of the type used by Ouyang and Hon was 1,000kg. Evidence showed declarations made by the group always weighed the pallet at 1,200kg, though it is believed 50kg of cannabis was moved in each delivery. Contact details on invoices from the legitimate storage businesses were also linked back to the men. Hon was arrested by NCA officers in February, 2022. Ouyang was arrested in December, 2023. Ouyang and Hon appeared at Manchester Crown Court where Ouyang pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply class B drugs in January, 2024. Hon pleaded guilty to the same offence on June 25th, 2025. They were sentenced at the same court on Monday. Hon received a prison sentence of three years and one month, while Ouyang received 3½ years' imprisonment. Barry Vinall, NCA operations manager, said: 'Ouyang and Hon were key players in this large-scale cannabis supply operation, producing up to £9 million in profit and working closely with a wider group. 'They attempted to make their operations appear legitimate but investigators unravelled their vast communications and movements showing they would often transport pallets back across to England so they could be reused for further importations. 'This organised crime group targeted Northern Ireland as their market where they knew their drugs would attract a premium price. 'Gangs like those run by Ouyang and Hon fuel an industry that sees people transported to the UK to work illegally in cannabis farms and taking action against those involved in these crimes is a priority for the NCA.'
