Thread: Sentences for immigrant smugglers upheld

Sentences for immigrant smugglers upheld
© 2008 The Associated Press
Dec. 16, 2008, 5:56PM
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Print Email Del.icio.usDiggTechnoratiYahoo! BuzzMcALLEN, Texas — A federal appeals court has upheld the sentences of three people involved in an illegal immigrant smuggling conspiracy in which 19 immigrants died after being in a stifling trailer in South Texas.

Three immigrant smugglers from the Brownsville area had challenged the evidence and the severity of the sentences.

A three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans released a decision Monday affirming the sentences for Victor Rodriguez, Rosa Maria Serrataz and Emma Sapata Rodriguez. The court rejected the Rodriguezes' argument that they played a more limited role because they had not planned for the trailer to be taken so far north before the immigrants would be unloaded.

In May 2003, the three helped arrange for illegal immigrants they sneaked into the country to board a tractor trailer in a Harlingen field to take them north of an inland checkpoint toward Houston.

There was no ventilation in the trailer and the doors were not opened until it reached Victoria, more than three hours away. When police arrived at the scene they found 17 dead immigrants. Two more would later die at the hospital. They died of suffocation, dehydration and hypothermia inside a trailer streaked with blood from their attempts to claw their way out. A 5-year-old crushed in the panicked knot of people died of mechanical asphyxia.

The Rodriguezes and Serrataz were among 14 people charged in connection with the smuggling operation.

Emma Sapata Rodriguez was sentenced to prison for 15 years. Her husband, Victor Rodriguez, was sentenced to 23 years and four months in prison. The couple smuggled eight people onto the trailer including the 5-year-old boy and his father who both perished. Rosa Maria Serrataz, who smuggled one person onto the trailer, received the recommended maximum sentence of 12 years and seven months
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6168223.html

this is good news, but unfortunately, now our tax money goes to keeping these three morons in prison

Dont worry; The Rodriguezes and Serrataz will be pardoned by Bush while Ramos and Compian Rot in Prison

I am so sick of this corrupt country .. Republicans AND Democrat's