2 adult men sentenced to prison in smuggling deaths of 3 sisters around Mount Laguna

In rugged terrain in close proximity to Mount Laguna sits a shrine to the Virgen de Guadalupe. Border Patrol agents connect with a nearby foot route the “Shrine Trail,” in which undocumented immigrants producing the arduous trek by means of the area leave rosaries draped in excess of a adhere that crosses the entrance of the altar.

A snow-included shrine to the Virgen de Guadalupe in the mountains southeast of Mount Laguna.

(Courtesy of U.S. Attorney’s Business office for the Southern District of California)

According to prosecutors, immigrants and the smugglers who convey them throughout the border “visit this shrine ahead of they descend the north facet of the mountain and hence no for a longer time have Mexico in their watch — as if there is no turning back again.”

In February 2020, three sisters from Oaxaca were producing the journey, led by two brothers from Chihuahua who were being smuggling them, when a snowstorm blew through, stranding the ill-prepared group. All a few sisters died of hypothermia about 300 yards from the Virgin Mary shrine.

On Friday, a federal decide sentenced the brothers — 38-calendar year-aged Cecilio Rios-Quiñones and 23-year-old Ricardo Rios-Quiñones — to 5 ½ several years each and every in prison for their roles in the sisters’ deaths.

The brothers pleaded responsible in August to felony prices of conspiracy and two counts relating to human smuggling in link with the fatalities of Juana Santos Arce, 35, Margarita Santos Arce, 32, and Paula Santos Arce, 29.

Household customers explained to media shops in Mexico that for lack of work and revenue, the sisters, who hailed from a tiny mountain city in central Oaxaca, ended up hoping to achieve “el sueño americano” — the American desire.

U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo referred to as their Feb. 10, 2020, fatalities just one of the worst human smuggling situations she’d noticed in 15 many years as a decide, according to prosecutors.

“It is tragic that another person needs to occur listed here to do the job and dies,” Bencivengo stated, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California. “But it is additional tragic that there are persons who profit from this, who deal with them like cargo.”

Prosecutors claimed this was the spot the place the Santos Arce sisters died. This is the view on the lookout back toward the border, with Mexico witnessed in the length 1 very last time prior to the “Shrine Trail” potential customers vacationers toward Mount Laguna.

(Courtesy of U.S. Attorney’s Business office for the Southern District of California)

Court docket paperwork in the case outline how both equally sets of siblings were hunting for better life for their massive, very poor families in their rural hometowns, but were being not perfectly organized for the multi-working day trek by means of rain and snow. The courtroom papers also document how an elite Border Patrol research-and-rescue staff also struggled with grueling things in a race versus time to try to help save the final surviving sister.

Defense attorney Kenneth Troiano described the agents’ rescue initiatives as “no fewer than heroic.”

According to sentencing files, the Santos Arce sisters regularly arrived to the United States for agricultural work, primarily choosing strawberries in the Northwest. In early 2020, the sisters were being again planning to come across do the job in the U.S. and created their way to Tijuana, together with a nephew and Paula’s 18-thirty day period-old daughter, the place they agreed to fork out smugglers $8,500 per person to be led across the border.

Smugglers introduced the toddler across the border individually and despatched the nephew with a diverse team. The a few sisters were being despatched with the Rios-Quiñones brothers as guides.

Prosecutors contended that equally brothers had preceding smuggling expertise, but attorneys for the guys claimed in sentencing memos that Ricardo had designed the journey just one time with yet another group, to find out the route, when Cecilio experienced never ever smuggled any individual.

They’d been recruited as foot guides, according to their lawyers, by a team that utilized a 3rd brother as a smuggler. That brother, Rito, pleaded responsible final month in a individual federal human smuggling circumstance.

Cecilio, Ricardo and the sisters established off Feb. 9 realizing it would be a multi-working day journey crossing the border around Campo and continuing throughout a freeway, an interstate and into the rugged mountain terrain to the “Shrine Path.” The team set off in the rain, and on the next working day, after by now trekking at the very least 16 miles into better elevation, turned caught in a snowstorm.

Prosecutors stated the group did not have appropriate garments and materials to endure the severe weather conditions, and they stopped in the vicinity of a massive boulder, where by “the sisters no extended could proceed — each and every one particular slowly commenced dying because of to the outcomes of hypothermia.” Defense lawyers explained the guys huddled with the women of all ages, striving to hold them warm till the early afternoon of Feb. 10, when they hiked to a place where they could get cellphone reception to get in touch with 911.

By that time, 1 of the sisters was useless, and a second sister died by the time Border Patrol brokers attained the group about three hours later.

A photo from the scene reveals the brokers doing the job to try to help you save Juana on a steep, snow-coated hill — an area wherever the circumstances and terrain built it much too tricky for a helicopter to hoist her away. The brokers up coming experimented with to carry Juana, but the path was way too steep and slippery.

As a substitute, they began preparations to camp out overnight in an attempt to preserve the eldest sister alive, but as night time fell, the “agents understood they way too had been beginning to expertise the consequences of hypothermia and begun calling for reinforcements,” according to prosecutors.

Border Patrol search-and-rescue brokers work following nightfall on Feb. 10, 2020, to continue seeking to preserve Juana Santos Arce. A defense attorney for just one of the smugglers identified as their steps “no significantly less than heroic.”

(Courtesy of U.S. Attorney’s Office environment for the Southern District of California)

A San Diego Hearth-Rescue Office helicopter was unable to hoist the wounded female, so a paramedic from the aircraft dropped on to the mountain to enable care for her. Quickly thereafter, she died.

It wasn’t until finally later on that night time, as Border Patrol brokers analyzed the victims’ Mexican voting playing cards, that authorities understood they were sisters.

“The unhappy fact is that Mr. (Cecilio) Rios-Quiñones will without end are living with the guilt of obtaining been part of a legal act that killed 3 girls,” his attorney, Michelle Betancourt, wrote in a sentencing memo. “(He) regrets the incredible decline his steps prompted the Santos loved ones.”

Ricardo Rios-Quiñones wrote in a letter to the judge: “I am a gentleman of religion and I am really remorseful for what I did … We weren’t ready for the storm and I would have under no circumstances participated in this if I would have identified anyone would stop up damage or useless. I experience horrible for what took place.”