US jails Guatemalan man for 30 years over deadly smuggling operation

The 2022 incident resulted in the deaths of 53 immigrants trapped inside a tractor-trailer in dangerously high heat.

A Guatemalan man has been sentenced to 30 years in a United States prison for his role in a human-smuggling operation that killed 53 migrants trapped in a truck – a disaster that had been described as one of the deadliest such incidents along the US-Mexico border in recent history.

US District Judge Orlando Garcia handed 39-year-old Rigoberto Ramon Miranda-Orozco a 30-year prison term on Tuesday, more than a year after his extradition from Guatemala in March 2025.

He was first arrested in Guatemala in August 2024, as part of a cross-border effort to dismantle the human-smuggling network.

The charges stem from a fatal incident on June 27, 2022. According to the US Department of Justice, emergency crews discovered dozens of people trapped inside an abandoned truck in a remote area on the southern outskirts of San Antonio, Texas.

A total of 64 migrants had endured a lengthy journey that began in Guatemala and continued through Mexico across the border into the US.

By the time the truck was driving from Laredo, Texas, to San Antonio – a distance of 250km (155 miles) – prosecutors say the air conditioning had stopped functioning. When the truck was discovered, temperatures were approaching 32C (90F).

Forty-eight people were pronounced dead on the scene, and five more died while receiving emergency medical treatment for heat-related illness and dehydration.

Among the dead were six children and a pregnant woman. Of those killed, 21 were Guatemalan nationals.

Miranda-Orozco has admitted to arranging travel and accommodation for two of the migrants who died in the truck and another who survived but suffered grave injuries.

He pleaded guilty in July to conspiring to bring a migrant into the US resulting in death, as well as aiding and abetting the unlawful entry of migrants resulting in death and serious bodily injury.

According to The Associated Press news agency, Miranda-Orozco is among a group of nearly 20 people sentenced in the US and Guatemala in connection with the tragedy.

Felipe Orduna-Torres, identified as the leader of the operation in the US, was sentenced to life in prison in a federal court in San Antonio in June 2025.

Armando Gonzales-Ortega, described by prosecutors as Orduna-Torres’s top assistant, received an 83-year sentence.

Further proceedings remain pending, including in the case against the truck driver.

According to prosecutors, investigators found signs of passengers’ desperate attempts to escape the abandoned truck. Some had reportedly removed clothing. Scratch marks on the trailer’s interior, meanwhile, suggested that some people had clawed at the walls in a futile bid to escape.

The prosecutors said the passengers had paid as much as $15,000 for passage across the border.

“It was clear that they suffered tremendously in their last few hours on this earth,” US Attorney Justin Simmons told reporters at a Tuesday news conference following the sentencing.

The I-35 highway near where the truck was found runs through San Antonio from the Mexican border.

It is considered a popular smuggling corridor because of the large volume of truck traffic, Jack Staton, a former senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told the Reuters news agency at the time.

The administration of President Donald Trump has cited the need to end human trafficking as a rationale for his crackdown on irregular immigration across the southern border.

But critics have argued that hardline enforcement tactics may drive immigrants to pursue more dangerous methods for crossing the border irregularly.