WASHINGTON: A federal grand jury indicted 11 people on Friday for allegedly orchestrating a migrant smuggling operation to the United States that ended in the deaths of seven people travelling in a freight car, the Justice Department announced.

From April 2023 through May of this year, the defendants allegedly smuggled undocumented migr­ants into the US aboard freight trains, charging between $1,500 and $10,000 per crossing, the agency said in a statement.

In the early hours of May 9, the smugglers allegedly loaded at least seven migrants into a Union Pacific freight railcar in Del Rio, Texas, on the US-Mexico border.

The railcar had no ventilation, while outside temperatures topped 31 degrees Celsius.

The train departed for San Antonio, where the smugglers reopened the railcar and found the migrants in distress, including one who was already dead.

The smugglers then allegedly left the body near the railroad track and fled, while the train continued on its journey.

“On May 10, a worker at the Union Pacific Rail Yard in Laredo saw a leg sticking out from a Conex shipping container,” the Justice Department statement read. “Upon inspection, six aliens were discovered deceased in the shipping container.”

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2026