Smuggler lies about migrants being ‘all family’ at Border Patrol checkpoint
Vehicles wait for inspection at the Border Patrol’s Laredo North vehicle checkpoint in Laredo, Texas, on Friday, Feb. 2, 2018. When traffic backs up at Laredo North, agents say they sometimes have to speed up inspections to try to move vehicles through more quickly. (AP Photo/Nomaan Merchant)
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McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — A South Texas man has been sentenced to almost four years in prison for smuggling through a border checkpoint migrants he said were his family, U.S. Attorney Alamdar Hamdani announced Wednesday.
David Alberto Martinez, 39, of Laredo, pleaded guilty in October to transporting and conspiring to transport undocumented non-citizens. He has been ordered to serve 42 months in federal prison.
Martinez on Aug. 4 drove a vehicle to the Border Patrol checkpoint on Highway 35 north of Laredo — commonly called Checkpoint Charlie. Inside were seven others including a Guatemalan national. Hamdani says Martinez lied to authorities and said the occupants were “all family.”
One of the migrants later told officials they had paid $8,500 to a human smuggling organization to be transported farther into the U.S. interior.
Martinez had been convicted before for transporting 10 migrants who were recovered from a major crash in Duval County after the vehicle he was using overturned and flipped. Two of the migrants had been ejected and six others required emergency treatment and were hospitalized.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.