11 indicted in Del Rio smuggling case after migrant deaths
Eleven people were indicted after migrants were loaded in Del Rio into a sealed rail container that later left seven dead, including a 14-year-old boy.
Federal prosecutors in Del Rio obtained an indictment against 11 people in a smuggling case that left seven migrants dead inside a shipping container, turning the city into the point where the operation moved from a train route into a fatal human cargo load. Investigators say the container was loaded in Del Rio after a train departed from Long Beach, California, putting Val Verde County at the center of a route that ended in tragedy on Texas rails.
The federal grand jury returned the indictment and prosecutors unsealed it Friday, charging the defendants in connection with an attempted alien smuggling operation. Authorities said the group used cargo trains to move migrants deeper into the United States, relying on a sealed rail container that trapped people in sweltering Texas heat. Six bodies were later found in a rail yard in Laredo, including a 14-year-old boy, and another migrant was left for dead near the tracks in San Antonio.
Justin R. Simmons, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, pointed to the danger of the conditions inside the container. “In that kind of heat, it’s May in Texas,” Simmons said. The case adds another deadly chapter to a region that has repeatedly seen federal smuggling prosecutions tied to rail lines, freight yards, and hidden transport corridors across South Texas.
For Del Rio residents, the indictment underscores how local rail access can be pulled into a larger smuggling network long before victims are found. The route described by prosecutors moved through Texas by freight train, with the worst outcome unfolding only after the container reached Laredo and the human toll became undeniable.
The Western District of Texas has seen a steady stream of immigration and alien-smuggling cases, and Texas has already been marked by mass-casualty smuggling deaths, including the 53 migrants who died in a tractor-trailer in San Antonio in 2022. This indictment puts the focus back on the fatal breakdown point in the rail shipment, and on the people who prosecutors say helped make that route possible.
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