14 Charged Over Deaths of Seven Migrants in Sealed Texas Rail Container
Federal prosecutors have charged 14 people over a human smuggling operation that left seven migrants dead inside a sealed shipping container on a freight train in Texas, the Justice Department announced on Monday.
A federal grand jury in the Western District of Texas returned a superseding indictment against the group — seven people unlawfully present in the United States, three other non-citizens and four US citizens, according to the department. The charges centre on a failed smuggling attempt in May in which seven people, including a 14-year-old boy from Honduras, died after being loaded into a poorly ventilated container.
Seven people loaded into a sealed container
According to court documents, the organisation began moving at least seven migrants, including the 14-year-old, into Del Rio in February 2026. On or about 9 May, after they had been brought across the border from Mexico, smugglers took them to the Union Pacific tracks in Del Rio. Between about 1.18pm and 1.25pm, while a train stood still, the smugglers used red bolt cutters to cut the lock off a Conex shipping container, loaded the seven people inside and shut the door.
The container was stacked on top of another, had no ventilation or cooling, and was secured from the outside so it could not be opened from within. Outside temperatures that day ranged from 88 to 92 degrees Fahrenheit. The train then left Del Rio and travelled east towards San Antonio.
When the train reached San Antonio, the smugglers opened the container, found the people inside in peril, and fled, leaving one of the dead by the railroad tracks and the rest inside. The train then continued south to Laredo. On 10 May, a worker at the Union Pacific rail yard in Laredo saw a leg sticking out of a container and found six people dead inside. San Antonio officers later found the seventh victim by the tracks.
Four of the dead were Mexican nationals and three were Honduran nationals, including the 14-year-old, and at least one victim had messaged a loved one pleading for help, investigators found.
A network running since 2023
Prosecutors say the organisation operated from at least April 2023 through 12 May 2026, using cargo trains to move people into the United States after bringing them across the southern border from Mexico. Each person smuggled, or their family and friends, paid between $1,500 and $10,000, and people were often held at stash houses or hidden in brush along the Rio Grande near Del Rio before being loaded into containers.
Eleven were first indicted in July; the superseding indictment adds three more people and new money laundering charges.
The charges the 14 face
Twelve defendants are charged with conspiracy to transport aliens resulting in death and aiding and abetting that transportation, offences carrying a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Eleven face seven counts of aiding and abetting illegal entry; conviction on at least three counts carries five to 15 years. Twelve are charged with conspiracy to bring aliens into the United States causing serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy, punishable by up to 20 years, and eleven face money laundering conspiracy charges, also carrying up to 20 years.
“By allegedly orchestrating this deadly human smuggling scheme, these defendants showed no regard for the value of human life and put people in harm’s way to pad their own pockets,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
“Seven people are dead as the result of another callous alien smuggling scheme,” said US Attorney Justin R. Simmons for the Western District of Texas. “There have been multiple rail car alien smuggling interdictions over the last many months.”
Simmons also warned that anyone found in the United States after being smuggled in would be removed. The administration has relied heavily on deportation flights as part of that enforcement drive.
A wider crackdown on smuggling networks
Homeland Security Investigations, US Border Patrol and other agencies investigated the case, which is supported by Joint Task Force Alpha, the Justice Department’s lead effort against smuggling and trafficking networks. The task force’s work has led to more than 486 arrests and more than 447 convictions, the department said.
“This indictment reflects Homeland Security Investigation’s commitment to pursuing the criminal networks that profit by treating human lives as cargo,” said Special Agent in Charge John A. Pasciucco of HSI San Antonio.
The case is also part of the Homeland Security Task Force initiative, a whole-of-government push on border enforcement set up under an executive order, even as the department’s own figures show violent crime falling sharply across the United States.
An indictment is only an allegation. All 14 defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
