A Guatemalan suspect has been arrested and charged for his involvement in a massive 2022 smuggling effort which killed dozens of immigrants.
Rigoberto Roman Mirando Orozco was arrested alongside six others by Guatemalan police on Wednesday August 21 for their actions that killed 53 people trying to get from Mexico into the United States, including eight children. Guatemalan authorities revealed that the arrests were made as a result of 13 department raids.
Mirando Orozco was reportedly the ringleader for the disastrous smuggling scheme and has been requested to be extradited to America. He has been charged with six separate counts of smuggling migrants that led to serious injury or death.
The June 2022 incident was discovered when the group of migrants were found trapped in a semitruck in the San Antonio heat, having been abandoned by smugglers along a back road. While more than 50 people died as a result, over a dozen were still alive and taken to a local hospital for treatment. The tragedy has been referred to as the deadliest smuggling effort in American history.
On Thursday August 22, more than two years after the incident, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Miranda Orozco can be linked to four of the migrants found in the trailer, three of whom died as a result of being trapped in excessive heat. If convicted of the six charges against him, the smuggler could be sentenced to life in prison.
The 47-year-old is the first suspect in the case to be apprehended outside the United States and face charges in America. According to Jaime Esparza, an American lawyer working on the disturbing investigation, a total of seven people have been brought into custody in the United States. Even of the six who were arrested in Guatemala this week, Miranda Orozco is the only one facing extradition. The rest of the suspects will face consequences in Guatemala.
Two suspects from Texas, including the driver of the tractor trailer, were arrested shortly after the migrants were found. One pleaded guilty to charges of smuggling and another pleaded not guilty, who will stand trial at an unspecified date. Last year, four others were arrested, all Mexican nationals, in connection with the smuggling scheme.
According to police, the arrested suspects were not ignorant of the fact that the trailer had no air-conditioning, leaving the migrants in the sweltering heat during the three-hour drive between Laredo—the Mexican border city—to San Antonio. The temperatures got up to a hundred degrees as the suffocating migrants tried to get out of the trailer, screaming for help.
Miranda Orozco’s indictment was also unsealed this week, revealing that he and the other smugglers confiscated everyone’s cell phones before they got into the truck, taking their one method of contacting others for help. Some kind of powder was put in the trailer to ward off patrol dogs sniffing out humans at border check stations.
Upon its arrival in Texas, 48 migrants in the trailer had died. 16 more were treated for heat-related injuries and five died at hospitals. Of those who passed from the tragedy, 27 were from Mexico, 14 came from Honduras, seven from Guatemala, and two from El Salvador.
