(The Caller-Times published the following story by Tim Eaton on its website on August 1.)
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted a Kingsville railroad conductor, along with three other men, in connection with the smuggling of 11 illegal immigrants who were found dead in a railroad car in Iowa last year.
Union Pacific Railroad conductor Arnulfo Flores Jr., 33, of Kingsville, is accused of telling immigrant smugglers the locations and times of train stops in South Texas. Flores knew the smugglers used the information to create opportunities to load undocumented immigrants onto the trains, prosecutors said. He was indicted of conspiracy to transport illegal immigrants which resulted in death.
The grand jury in Houston also indicted Juan Fernando Licea-Cedillo, 26; Rogelio Hernandez Ramos, 38; and Guillermo Madrigal Ballesteros, 45, according to officials. Officials didn’t release where they lived.
Licea and Madrigal were charged with transporting and harboring nine of the 11 undocumented immigrants who died in the railroad car. They were also charged with harboring four other undocumented immigrants for commercial advantage and financial gain. Hernandez was accused of transporting and harboring three undocumented immigrants for commercial advantage and financial gain. Two died in the railroad car.
“It was a well planned, well-organized criminal enterprise,” said Michael Shelby, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas.
Immigrants paid an average of $1,000 apiece to be smuggled into the United States by Licea-Cedillo and his associates, Shelby said.
“They don’t care about your life, they care about making the next dollar,” Shelby said.
The decomposing bodies of the 11 undocumented immigrants – seven men and four women – were found in a freight yard in Denison, Iowa, about 50 miles southeast of Sioux City, in October 2002. That was four months after the immigrants began their journey north.
The accused men allegedly brought the undocumented immigrants across the Rio Grande in groups of two or three and then hid them in “stash houses” in Harlingen, according to the indictment. The immigrants were later loaded into latched rail cars to be smuggled past the border checkpoint at Sarita.
The immigrants who died were scheduled to get off the train near Kingsville to be driven to other Texas cities. Instead, they later were found dead in Iowa.
The conspiracy charges and each individual count that alleges that someone died carries a penalty of life imprisonment or death. All other counts carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison without parole and a $250,000 fine.
Prosecutors said they have not decided which sentence to seek.
The case was filed in U.S. District Court in Houston and the trial likely will be there, Shelby said
Licea-Cedillo was in custody on an unrelated federal charge. Warrants had been issued for Hernandez and Madrigal, prosecutors said. Flores was arrested Thursday in McAllen, and had an initial court appearance.
The remains of the dead immigrants are in the process of being returned to their families, according to a Department of Justice news release.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)