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Immigrant describes horror of failed smuggling attempt

By JUAN A. LOZANO
Associated Press

HOUSTON — Near death and his vision blurred, Jose Juan Roldan Castro could still survey the horrific aftermath of the nation’s deadliest human smuggling attempt once the doors of the tractor-trailer stuffed with more than 70 illegal immigrants were opened.

“I could see all those people lying on the floor of the trailer,” he said. “People were on top of each other. I tried to get away from that. It’s terrible to be seeing that.”

Roldan recounted his experience of nearly four hours inside the airtight tractor-trailer during testimony Thursday in the retrial of Tyrone Williams, who drove the vehicle.

Williams could face the death penalty for his role in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants during the May 2003 smuggling attempt from South Texas to Houston.

Roldan said he so feared for his life after climbing inside the trailer at a secluded field near Harlingen that he immediately removed a metal sheet covering one of vehicle’s back doors and used his fists to punch a hole through one of the rear signal lights and let air in. At first, other immigrants tried to stop him.

“I shouted, ’Don’t you understand. We are in danger here of dying because no air is coming in,”’ he testified in Spanish through an interpreter.

Roldan, 30, from Puebla, Mexico, was the first survivor of the smuggling attempt to testify in Williams’ retrial, which began Monday.

Roldan said he was told by the smugglers that he and the other immigrants would be let out and transported in other vehicles to Houston once they passed a Border Patrol checkpoint in Sarita. But the trailer kept going.

During the trip, the trailer’s temperatures skyrocketed, in part because the vehicle’s air conditioning system was not turned on. The immigrants were forced to peel off their clothes and punch additional holes through the back doors for air as their body temperatures rose from their normal 98.6 degrees to as high as 113 degrees. The first immigrant who died was a 5-year-old boy.

Roldan said he couldn’t understand how Williams didn’t hear or feel as he and the other immigrants desperately banged on the trailer’s walls and shouted they were dying and needed to be released.

“He did not have one ounce of compassion, and he continued without stopping,” Roldan said. “Only a person who was blind and deaf could have done what he did.”

By the time the trailer’s doors were opened and Williams abandoned the container at a truck stop about 100 miles southwest of Houston, 17 immigrants were dead. Two died later. They died from dehydration, overheating and suffocation.

Craig Washington, Williams’ defense attorney, while questioning Roldan, tried to place blame on other members of the smuggling ring. He said they were more aware than his client that the trailer was filled with too many people.

“Since he is the driver of the trailer, he is responsible,” Roldan said.

Prosecutors say Williams was solely responsible for the immigrants’ deaths because he ignored their cries for help and failed to turn on his vehicle’s air conditioning unit.

A jury convicted Williams last year on 38 transporting counts, but he avoided a death sentence because the jury couldn’t agree on his role in the crime. The jury deadlocked on 20 other counts. However, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the decision, saying the verdict didn’t count because the jury failed to specify his role in the crime.

Williams, 35, a Jamaican citizen who lived in Schenectady, N.Y., is the only one of 14 people charged in the case who is facing the death penalty. He was indicted on 58 transporting, harboring and conspiracy counts, 20 of which are eligible for the death penalty.

So far, seven people have been sentenced to prison in the case. Sentencing for three others is pending. Charges against two were dismissed, and one man remains a fugitive.