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Daniel Zavala Ramos, 42, faces a possible sentence of life in
prison following his guilty plea in U.S. District Court in
Laredo, Texas, to a single charge of conspiring to bring
migrants without documents from Guatemala through Mexico to the
U.S. and placing lives in jeopardy and causing serious injury
and deaths, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Sentencing is set for July 7.
Ramos was among six Guatemalans charged over the crash of the
semitrailer truck and the first to be convicted. The other five
have a final pretrial conference on June 3, according to court
records. Ramos' attorney did not immediately return an email
Wednesday evening seeking comment.
At least 160 migrants, many from Guatemala, were packed into the
truck that hit the support base for a pedestrian bridge on Dec.
9, 2021, and overturned, authorities said. At least 53 people
were killed and more than 100 were injured, officials said, and
video footage at the time of the crash showed dead and injured
migrants in a jumbled pile inside the truck's collapsed freight
container.
The Justice Department statement said the dead included
unaccompanied children.
The crash occurred on a highway leading toward the Chiapas state
capital, some 160 miles (260 kilometers) from Mexico's border
with Guatemala and about 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) south of
the Mexican border with Texas.
Authorities announced the arrests of Ramos and the five other
defendants in Guatemala and Texas in 2024, on the third
anniversary of the accident. Ramos was extradited in 2025 from
Guatemala to face charges, the DOJ statement said.
Prosecutors said the Guatemalans conspired to smuggle migrants
from Guatemala through Mexico to the U.S. for payment. In cases
of unaccompanied children being smuggled, the defendants would
provide scripts of what to say if they were apprehended,
authorities said.
The smugglers would move migrants on foot, inside microbuses,
cattle trucks and tractor trailers and use Facebook Messenger to
request and deliver identification documents to the migrants to
get them into the U.S., according to authorities.
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