Trailer held 64 migrants without functioning air conditioning or water
U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia sentenced Guatemalan Rigoberto Ramon Miranda-Orozco to 30 years in prison on Tuesday for his role in the smuggling-related deaths of 53 migrants whose bodies were found in the back of a tractor-trailer abandoned along a San Antonio road in June 2022. Miranda-Orozco pleaded guilty in July to federal human-smuggling charges, including conspiracy to bring an alien into the United States resulting in death.
The case stems from the evening of June 27, 2022, when a tractor-trailer was found abandoned along a San Antonio road with 64 people inside. The trailer had no functioning air conditioning or water in the back. It had traveled about 156 miles from Laredo, Texas, in 90-degree Fahrenheit heat before it was discovered.
Forty-eight people were pronounced dead at the scene, while five more died later at a hospital. Another 11 migrants were injured. Among the 53 killed, six were children and at least one was pregnant. The victims included 26 people from Mexico, 21 from Guatemala and six from Honduras.
Prosecutors said Miranda-Orozco was a member of a migrants-smuggling operation and had conspired with others to facilitate the smuggling of migrants from Guatemala, through Mexico and into the United States. Two of his clients were among those killed, and a third survived after a lengthy hospital stay, prosecutors said, with what they described as “serious bodily injuries.”
At a press conference Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Justin Simmons for the Western District of Texas said those who died as a result of being in the trailer that day “suffered tremendously during their last few hours on this Earth.” He said one of the clearest pieces of evidence indicating the level of their suffering was not just the amount of clothing they had removed while trying to cool off in the sweltering temperatures inside the trailer but also the claw marks agents found on the side, where migrants were literally trying to claw their way out.
“Unfortunately for them, there was simply no escape,” Simmons said. He said the migrants paid between $12,000 and $15,000 a person to be smuggled into the United States.
Acting Executive Associate Director John Condon of Homeland Security Investigations said, “This sentencing delivers a measure of accountability for a tragedy that claimed 53 lives and devastated multiple families.”
Condon also said, “Miranda-Orozco and his co-conspirators treated human lives as cargo, knowingly placing vulnerable people in lethal conditions to advance their criminal enterprise.”
Miranda-Orozco was arrested in Guatemala at the request of the United States in August 2024 and extradited from Guatemala in March 2025. He pleaded guilty in July, and Garcia sentenced him on Tuesday.
According to prosecutors, 19 people have now been convicted in connection with the mass smuggling deaths, nine in the United States and 10 in Guatemala.