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A Guatemalan man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in the 2022 human smuggling attempt that left 53 migrants dead inside a sweltering tractor-trailer in San Antonio, the deadliest such tragedy on record along the US-Mexico border.
Getting into it: US District Judge Orlando Garcia sentenced Rigoberto Román Miranda-Orozco, 39, on Tuesday after he pleaded guilty in July to arranging travel and lodging through Guatemala, Mexico and the US for migrants, including two who died in the trailer and a third who survived with serious injuries.
He was arrested in Guatemala in August 2024 during a major crackdown and extradited to the US in March 2025. The deaths date back to June 2022, when 64 migrants were packed into the trailer for the roughly three-hour, 156-mile ride from Laredo to San Antonio in 90-degree heat with no working air conditioning. Forty-eight people were already dead when the abandoned truck was found on a back road in southwest San Antonio, and five more died after reaching the hospital. Six children and at least one pregnant woman were among the 53 killed.
Twenty-one of the victims were from Guatemala, and migrants had paid as much as $15,000 each for the crossing. Prosecutors say Miranda-Orozco kept lining up more trips even after he found out his earlier clients had died.
“It was clear that they suffered tremendously in their last few hours on this earth,” US Attorney Justin Simmons said, adding that investigators found clothes people had stripped off in the heat and scratch marks along the inside of the trailer. “They were literally trying to claw their way out.”
The US and Guatemala have now convicted nearly 20 people over the deaths, including the operation’s US leader, Felipe Orduña-Torres, who was sentenced to life in prison last year, and his second-in-command, who received 83 years. The truck’s driver and others are still awaiting sentencing.
