By Steve Gorman
June 11 (Reuters) - Two Guatemalan nationals pleaded guilty in a Texas federal court on Thursday to human smuggling charges stemming from the December 2021 crash of a tractor-trailer in Mexico that killed 55 of the 160-plus migrants packed inside.
Josefa Quino Canil De Zavala, 43, and Alberto Marcario Chitic, 32, who were extradited to the U.S., admitted as part of their plea that they conspired to smuggle adults and unaccompanied children from Guatemala through Mexico into the United States, the U.S. Justice Department said.
In one such operation, an estimated 166 migrants were crammed into a tractor-trailer truck that overturned and slammed into a bridge abutment near the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez in Chiapas, Mexico.
Fifty-five of the migrants died in the December 9, 2021, accident, including a 16-year-old girl, and dozens of others were injured. Video footage of the aftermath showed bodies scattered across the crash site.
Mexican authorities at the time said nearly all of the victims were Guatemalan. Chiapas officials said three people from the Dominican Republic, a Honduran, a Mexican and an Ecuadorean were among the injured.
Survivors said they had been squeezed into the trailer compartment so tightly that most people could only stand. At the time, the crash ranked among the deadliest migrant-smuggling accidents in Mexico in a decade.
Canil De Zavala and Chitic each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport an illegal alien to the U.S., causing serious bodily injury resulting in death, according to the Justice Department statement.
Both face a maximum penalty of life in prison when they are sentenced on September 9 in a federal court in Texas, the department said.
"The defendants ran a calculated alien smuggling operation that moved people across borders like a supply chain - recruiting them in Guatemala, collecting their money and packing them into cattle trucks and tractor-trailers for a dangerous journey through Mexico," said John Marck, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas.
Marck said that unaccompanied minors smuggled by the network were even given scripted language to recite to law enforcement should they be caught entering the U.S.
The two defendants and three other Guatemalans accused of taking part in the operation - Daniel Zavala Ramos, 41, Tomas Quino Canil, 37, and Oswaldo Manuel Zavala Quino, 25 - were extradited from Guatemala to the U.S. in 2025 to face charges.
U.S. authorities arrested an additional Guatemalan national, Jorge Agapito Ventura, 33, in Texas in December 2024. Ramos entered a guilty plea in April. Cases against the three others are pending.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los An geles; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
