A man in Texas was sentenced to more than five years in prison for operating a human smuggling ring for illegal immigrants, using social media, bad weather, and the COVID-19 pandemic to carry out the multi-year operation, according to a release by the United States Department of Justice.
21-year-old Juan Francisco Reyna, on January 8th, pleaded guilty to conspiring to transport and harbor illegal aliens, including several minors, within the United States. Reyna, from 2019 to 2023, was repeatedly caught smuggling illegal immigrants along the I-35 Border Patrol checkpoint, north of Laredo, Texas. The Southern District of Texas Court ordered him to serve 63 months in federal prison for the crime, followed by a year of supervised release.
U.S. Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei for the Southern District of Texas said in a statement:
Over the past six months, the Department of Justice has made securing our national border the number one priority, and the Southern District is putting that promise into action. Human smugglers may have had an easy time over the past few years, but those days are over. If you engage in these crimes, if you break our nation’s immigration laws, you will be caught and you will be punished. Simple as that.
The operation was widespread and multifaceted. Reyna maintained several stash houses around Laredo to hide and manage the people he brought across the border. Law enforcement found multiple illegal aliens at these houses and seized more than $56,000 in cash, 69,000 in pesos, and ammunition. He enlisted others to help, paying drivers to move illegal aliens to states like Oklahoma, Arkansas, Georgia, and Florida, and tasking others with collecting cash once the smuggled individuals reached their final destinations. Methods of transportation included tractor-trailers, box trucks, trains, and horse trailers
His cellphone contained the personal information of over 100 people he had helped to smuggle across the border, including photos, names, identifying details, and their countries of origin.
Reyna used Facebook to coordinate with his crew. Scout drivers kept watch on the I-35 checkpoint, tracking traffic conditions, weather, and suggesting which lanes to take. He timed his smuggling runs to line up with fog, storms, rain, and cold weather, anything that might make it harder for border patrol to detect them.
Reyna and his co-conspirators also took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic, advising drivers to tell authorities they were on their way to medical appointments in an attempt to expedite their passage through the checkpoints. He also designed walking paths, instructing drivers to drop off the illegals, who would walk for four to five hours only to meet the smuggler on the other side of the checkpoint.
Reyna was finally arrested on November 7, 2024, while personally moving illegal immigrants from a stash house in north Laredo. When officers tried to pull him over, he took off, first in a car, leading them on a four-minute chase, then on foot before he was finally caught. With him were five illegal immigrants, including an unaccompanied minor.
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