A South Texas man will spend five years in prison for smuggling 31 migrants inside a frigid trailer. The smuggler hid the migrants inside a refrigerated trailer behind a load of broccoli bound for Florida.
This week, 37-year-old Eric Mendiola went before U.S. District Judge Drew Barnett Tipton at a federal courthouse in Corpus Christi, Texas. Judge Tipton sentenced the San Benito man to five years in federal prison for transporting migrants in his tractor-trailer across the Sarita Border Patrol checkpoint on U.S. Highway 77. The sentence is the maximum allowed for the charge of human smuggling, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas. Court documents revealed the man was arrested twice before on similar charges.
On March 20, U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested Mendiola at the Sarita checkpoint on Highway 77 about 75 miles north of the Mexican border with Texas. Agents discovered the Texas truck driver attempted to smuggle 31 migrants in a tractor-trailer hidden behind a produce load, prosecutors revealed.
A criminal complaint filed by federal prosecutors revealed that on March 20 about an hour before midnight, a blue tractor-trailer drove up to the Border Patrol checkpoint inspection lane. During their initial inspection agents noticed Mendiola and two other occupants in the truck’s cab, agents questioned the driver on who they were. The driver identified the woman as his wife and a 3-year-old as his son. Mendiola provided Border Patrol agents with a bill of lading and said he was hauling a load of broccoli to Florida. The agents noticed nervous behavior from the driver when the Border Patrol K-9 alerted on the tractor-trailer as possibly carrying drug or human cargo.
The agents referred Mendiola to secondary inspection and began a physical search of the refrigerated trailer. During the search, agents discovered a group of migrants hiding behind a load of broccoli. In total, agents found 31 migrants inside the trailer which was being refrigerated to 41 degrees Fahrenheit.
Luisana Moreno is a contributing writer for Breitbart Texas.