McAllen Federal Judge Sentences Illegal Alien to Two Years in …
Austin, TX, 25 seconds ago -- Federal prosecutors announced a 39-year-old Mexican illegal immigrant residing in Edinburg received a two-year prison sentence after her conviction on a charge of harboring aliens.
In a news release[1], the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said the felon was an "indispensable link in the chain of events" that resulted in another illegal immigrant's death. Federal Judge Randy Crane handed down the sentence on Thursday.
Prosecutors say Sanjuana Garcia-Salazar, who is in custody after pleading guilty in November, admitted to keeping as many as 60 illegal aliens in a house each week for pecuniary gain. Police found her in the home with 21 illegal immigrants after finding a dead Guatemalan man in Edna in September 2022, the DOJ said. "She further acknowledged knowing about the Guatemalan male whom she had harbored at her residence.
She noted he had a really bad cough before being transported away from her residence," the news release said. The government added Garcia-Salazar is likely to be placed in "removal proceedings" upon the completion of her prison sentence.
U.S. Attorney Alamdar Hamdani commented on the gravity of the conviction. "Leaving a migrant's dead body on the side of the road is a growing and common tragedy along the southern border and shows the callousness of human smugglers," Hamdani said. "Today's sentence is a message that our office will aggressively prosecute those who smuggle migrants and harbor migrants, treating them as chattel and endangering their lives solely for profit."
The DOJ credited federal border patrol agents and Jackson County law enforcement for the investigation into Garcia-Salazar.
Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) placed a bill[2] on his priority list this session to create a state border protection unit and declare Texas is under invasion from drug trafficking and other criminal activity that accompanies illegal immigration.
References
- ^ news release (www.justice.gov)
- ^ placed a bill (thetexan.news)