HOUSTON - A judge on Monday sentenced a man charged as part of the nation's deadliest smuggling attempt to the 14 months he's already served in federal custody.
Juan Carlos Don Juan, 22, was not charged directly with the smuggling operation that left 19 illegal immigrants dead in May 2003 at a South Texas truck stop. Rather, he admitted helping transport and conceal the 3-year-old Honduran son of one of the survivors.
Don Juan pleaded guilty in March to helping to harbor an illegal immigrant and the unlawful transportation of the boy.
"I know I did wrong," Don Juan told U.S. District Court Judge Vanessa Gilmore. "I just want to get out of jail."
That won't happen immediately. Don Juan faces an unresolved drug charge in Cameron County, prosecutors said. Immigration authorities also have a detainer on him.
His attorney, Thomas Bevans, said he thought the sentence was fair.
Prosecutor Daniel C. Rodriguez had argued for a sentence higher in the punishment range, which was 12-to-18 months.
"He hasn't served much time, your honor," Rodriguez said, contending Don Juan had played the system by using a string of aliases as he went back and forth across the Mexican border.
Don Juan and his girlfriend, Erica Cardenas, were among the nine people arrested shortly after the deadly smuggling attempt.
Authorities said the couple tried to extort between $1,300 and $1,500 for the safe return of the boy during a meeting in McAllen with an undercover agent a day after the immigrants' bodies were discovered.
Neither Cardenas nor Don Juan was charged with conspiracy for the smuggling attempt, during which the boy's mother and more than 70 immigrants were packed into the truck. The boy was to have been transported separately from his mother.
Cardenas' trial has been postponed indefinitely.
Gilmore briefly grilled Don Juan about his personal life, noting he has a young son with Cardenas and is estranged from a son he had with Cardenas' sister.
"So what's it like at family reunions?" asked Gilmore, who was irritated to learn he doesn't keep up with the other woman or the boy.
Fourteen people have been indicted on various charges related to the smuggling attempt. Four were arrested in Mexico and face trial there.
The illegal immigrants from Mexico, Central America and the Dominican Republic were packed in the stifling trailer as they were transported from the Rio Grande Valley to Houston. When they began succumbing to temperatures that reached 173 degrees, the immigrants were abandoned at a truck stop near Victoria, about 125 miles southwest of Houston.
Seventeen were found dead and two more died later. The victims suffered from dehydration, hyperthermia and suffocation.
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