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Two smugglers found guilty of federal accusations related to the Death of 53 migrants Friday, found at the rear of a suffocating semi-trailer in Texas in 2022 was sentenced to decades in prison.
Felipus Orduna-Torres, 32, and Armando Gonzales-Tortega, 55, must be the first of several accused condemned to the tragedy of San Antonio, who remains the deadliest human smuggling attempt through the American-mexic border. In March, a jury deliberated to Only about an hour Before inviting men to be part of a human smuggling plot that resulted in death and wounds.
Orduna-Torres, who Prosecutors have described As a leader of smuggling, two sentences have been experienced and an additional 20 years on a third account to serve consecutively, according to Affiliate of CBS Kens. Gonzales-Telle was sentenced to 87.5 years in prison. The prosecutors had described Gonzales-Torta as an assistant to Orduna-Torres.
The two men were also sentenced to a fine of $ 250,000.
The 64 immigrants inside the truck came from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico and had paid between $ 12,000 and $ 15,000 each to be introduced as a smuggling in the United States, according to an indictment in the case. They had arrived to the border city of Texas de Laredo when they were placed in a Semi-trailer with broken air conditioning For a three -hour journey to San Antonio.
While the temperature rose inside the trailer, those inside shouted and hit the walls of the trailer to get help or tried to retire, the investigators said. More ultimately passed out. When the trailer was opened in San Antonio, 48 people had already died. 16 others were taken to hospitals, where five others died. The dead included six children and a pregnant woman. Only 11 people inside the vehicle survived.
Eric Gay / AP 
In a press briefing shortly after the incident, San Antonio police chief William McManus described the scene as “tragic beyond words”.
“I do not understand how someone could be so insensitive to what it happens and fled the scene”, McManus said.
Orduna-Torres and Gonzales-Torta were sentenced exactly three years after the tragedy.
The investigators said that the Orduna-Torres and Gonzales-Torta had worked with human smuggling operations in Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, and roads, guides, hiding places, trucks and shared trailers. Orduna-Torres provided the address to Laredo where they would be picked up, and Gonzalez Terdega met them there.
Five other men had previously pleaded guilty to accusations of crime in the case of smuggling, including the truck driver Homero Zamorano JR., which was found hiding near the trailer in certain bushes. Zamorano risks to life prison during the conviction in December. THE Other accused should be sentenced later this year.
The incident is the deadliest among the tragedies that have won thousands of lives in recent decades when people are trying to cross the American border in Mexico. Ten immigrants died in 2017 After being trapped in a truck parked in a Walmart store in San Antonio. In 2003, the bodies of 19 immigrants were found in a stuffy truck southeast of San Antonio.
