Guatemalan man sentenced to 30 years for smuggling tragedy that killed 53 people in Texas

A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a Guatemalan man extradited to the U.S. over his role in a 2022 human smuggling attempt that ended in the deaths of 53 migrants who had been transported in a sweltering tractor-trailer in Texas.

U.S. and Guatemalan prosecutors called Rigoberto Román Miranda-Orozco’s sentencing another step toward justice in one of the deadliest smuggling attempts along the U.S.-Mexico border. Miranda-Orozco, 39, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after admitting to arranging travel and accommodations for two people who died and another who was seriously injured.

Nearly 20 people in the U.S. and Guatemala have been convicted since the discovery of the abandoned trailer full of bodies horrified communities accustomed to seeing their young people leave, trying to flee poverty or violence in Central America and Mexico.

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

People tried to ‘claw their way out’ of a tractor with no air conditioning

The trailer’s air conditioning malfunctioned and would not blow cool air to the people trapped inside during the sweltering, three-hour ride in June 2022 from the border city of Laredo to San Antonio, authorities said. Prosecutors have said migrants paid up to $15,000 each to be taken across the U.S. border.

When the abandoned trailer was opened on a remote San Antonio back road, 48 migrants were dead. Another 16 were taken to hospitals, where five more died.

Simmons said investigators found clothing passengers had shed to cool off and claw marks on the trailer’s walls.

“They were literally trying to claw their way out,” he said.

Twenty-one of those who died were from Guatemala, Simmons said.

Other defendants still await sentencing

U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia sentenced Miranda-Orozco, who was arrested in Guatemala in 2024 and extradited to the U.S. the following year.

He pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to bring a migrant into the U.S. resulting in death, aiding and abetting bringing a migrant into the U.S. resulting in death, as well as aiding and abetting bringing a migrant into the U.S. resulting in serious bodily injury, prosecutors said.

Simmons said prosecutors in Guatemala were integral in securing convictions for Miranda Orozco and others. Guatemalan Attorney Gabriel García Luna attended Tuesday’s news conference in Texas.

Last year, Felipe Orduna-Torres, described by prosecutors as the leader of the smuggling operations inside the U.S., was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. Armando Gonzales-Ortega, his top assistant, was sentenced to 83 years.

Sentencing dates have been set for more people, including the truck’s driver.

The tragedy is the deadliest among those that have claimed thousands of lives in recent decades as people attempt to cross the U.S. border from Mexico. Ten migrants died in 2017 after they were trapped inside a truck parked at a Walmart in San Antonio.

In 2003, the bodies of 19 migrants were found in a sweltering truck southeast of San Antonio.