Smugglers sentenced for journey that still left 3 sisters dead
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SAN DIEGO (AP) — Two smugglers were being sentenced to federal jail on Friday for foremost a few sisters from Mexico into California, where they froze to death in a mountain snowstorm.
Cecilio Rios-Quiñones, 38, and his brother, 23-yr-outdated Ricardo Rios-Quiñones, obtained 5 1/2 several years each in U.S. District Court in San Diego.
They pleaded responsible very last year to conspiracy and other fees.
Prosecutors said the adult males, who are from Chihuahua, led the ladies across the border on Feb. 10, 2020, and were in a rugged region around Mount Laguna, about a dozen miles north of the border, when a snowstorm struck. The female, from Oaxaca, died from hypothermia.
The women, who arrived from very poor rural areas and have been looking for superior life, lacked appropriate apparel or materials for a journey of numerous times via rain and snow, authorities explained.
Protection attorneys argued that the brothers were only paid out to be guides and hadn’t envisioned this kind of intense temperature. They huddled with the girls, seeking to retain them heat, and a person last but not least hiked down the mountain to find a spot for cellphone reception to contact 911, attorneys claimed.
A U.S. Border Patrol look for and rescue device discovered Margarita Santos Arce, 32 and Paula Santos Arce, 29, lifeless. Juana Santos Arce, 35, died later.
“It is tragic that an individual needs to arrive listed here to function and dies, but it is a lot more tragic that there are men and women who gain from this, who address them like cargo,” U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo mentioned at the sentencing.
Cecilio Rios-Quiñones is regretful and “will eternally dwell with the guilt of acquiring been component of a prison act that killed 3 ladies,” his lawyer, Michelle Betancourt, wrote in a sentencing memo, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“I am a man of faith and I am extremely remorseful for what I did,” Ricardo Rios-Quiñones wrote in a letter to the judge. “We weren’t prepared for the storm and I would have under no circumstances participated in this if I would have acknowledged an individual would finish up hurt or useless.”
