(The Des Moines Register published the following story by Mark Siebert on its website on August 1.)
DES MOINES, Iowa — Federal authorities returned to a Des Moines railroad yard Thursday to announce charges against four men for their roles in the deaths of 11 immigrants discovered in Denison nine months ago.
In front of a gray, metal grain hopper — similar to the one where the immigrants’ badly decomposed bodies were found — attorneys from Iowa and Texas laid out their evidence of a ruthless smuggling operation involving multiple cells.
It was an operation authorities said involved a Union Pacific Railroad conductor in Texas. It also was an operation that ran for almost five years, including after news of the “Denison 11” was broadcast around the world.
“We’re going to tell you about a journey of tragedy that has now turned into a journey for justice,” said Charles Larson Sr., the U.S. attorney in Cedar Rapids.
Charged in the 27-count federal indictment were: Juan Fernando Licea Cedillo, 26; Guillermo Madrigal Ballestero, 45; and Rogelio Hernandez Ramos, 38.
Licea, the alleged ringleader, is in federal custody after being captured at a safe house in Texas. The other two remain at large, possibly in Mexico, authorities said.
The charges included conspiring to smuggle undocumented workers for personal gain where a death resulted.
Also charged in a separate action was Arnulfo Flores Jr., 33, a train conductor from Kingsville, Texas.
Authorities alleged Flores supplied specific information about train schedules to the smugglers. He was arrested Thursday morning and made his initial court appearance in McAllen, Texas.
All four face the possibility of the death penalty.
Michael Shelby, the U.S. attorney from Houston, said he made the announcement in Iowa out of respect for Iowans who coped with the tragedy.
“This case is about greed,” Shelby said. “This case is literally about the triumph of greed over human compassion, because these individuals, they view this loss of life as the cost of doing business.”
Many doubted Thursday’s announcement would ever be made.
Neither Crawford County Sheriff Tom Hogan, who was among the first on the scene in Denison, nor Dr. Julia Goodin, the state medical examiner who examined the bodies, held out much hope those responsible would be found.
But after eight months of work, involving hundreds of federal authorities, trips to remote Central American villages, and examination of thousands of Western Union wire transactions, investigators say they were able to piece together who put the 11 undocumented immigrants into the railcar.
Shelby described it not as looking for a needle in a haystack, but first having to find the haystack.
Within days of the bodies’ discovery, Goodin and a forensic pathologist provided authorities with general descriptions of the nameless victims: sex, height, approximate age.
Then Rosemary Amerena, a special agent with the FBI in McAllen, ventured into Mexico and Central America searching for family members. She traveled in a four-wheel drive vehicle to remote towns without roads, sometimes going door-to-door talking to families whose loved ones had left for a better life in the United States.
“These were very impoverished communities we went into where there was very limited communication,” Amerena said.
She collected blood samples from family members and made positive identifications through DNA analysis.
She found this about the seven men and four women: They ranged in age from 18 to 40; they came from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua. Two were sisters who traveled with their teenage cousin.
With those identities, authorities began to retrace the immigrants’ paths and build a criminal case.
Shelby said the three men charged began their criminal association in early 1998. They recruited people in Central America and the interior of Mexico, wanting to avoid U.S. immigration laws.
The immigrants first were smuggled through Mexico and brought across the Rio Grand River in small numbers. They were then hid in”stash houses” in Harlingen, just across the U.S.-Mexican border.
Once in the United States, the smugglers would contact family members of the immigrants and demand they wire money – from $300 to $1,200 as complete or partial payment.
When the money arrived, the immigrants were taken to the Harlingen railroad yard, where they were loaded into a grain car – with logistical help from the conductor, according to the charges.
The information proved profitable, according to the indictment, earning the conductor $50 a person.
The goal, Shelby said, was to avoid the Sarita Border Patrol Checkpoint, about halfway between the border and Kingsville, which is near Corpus Christi.
The Denison 11 were loaded onto the railcars on June 15 and June 16, 2002, according to the indictment. If successful, the immigrants would have been offloaded to safe houses in Kingsville.
From there, they would have traveled to Houston and then wherever in the United States they wanted to go.
Instead, they died of of dehydration and hyperthermia in the confines of the grain hopper, probably within the first 24 hours. The rail car then made a 1,300-mile trip north to Denison, where an elevator worker made the grisly discovery four months later. A three-car train containing the bodies was later taken to Des Moines, where Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation officials examined the rail car.
Shelby said he could not reveal specifically why the immigrants were never rescued.
He also said authorities knew who was responsible for locking the top hatch but were unsure of the suspect’s whereabouts. The man is among at least six others – all unnamed – who could still be charged.
“I can tell you this is a very significant smuggling operation even within the context of Texas, where it is almost a cottage industry in some parts of our state,” Shelby said.
The operation did not end until Licea’s arrest in February in a Harlingen stash house, he said.
Shelby doubts the indictments will deter other smugglers, but he said he hoped it would deter anyone contemplating a similar journey.
“The loss of life to these people is literally the cost of doing business,” Shelby said. “And I think if people knew that, they would not put their children, they would not put their brothers and sisters, they would not put their husbands and wives aboard trains like this.”
The trials of the men in custody will be in Texas, either in Brownsville or Houston. No date has been set.
Thursday’s announcement was made in the same railyard in Des Moines where Iowa authorities, using metal-cutting torches, removed the bodies.
Hogan, the Crawford County sheriff, was among those in attendance.
“I’m amazed,” Hogan said after the announcement. “I didn’t think there was a chance.”