SAN ANTONIO – A North Texas man was recently sentenced for his role in the smuggling of hundreds of people from the U.S.-Mexico border to San Antonio inside tractor-trailers, federal authorities said.
Fredi Zagala-Servin, 40, was sentenced to 97 months in prison for conspiracy to transport undocumented noncitizens, the Department of Justice said in a news release.
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He was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay $410,250.
Authorities said Zagala-Servin, of Kaufman, Texas, worked with co-conspirators in Mexico and Laredo and provided pickup locations for truck drivers to load migrants in tractor-trailers.
He would monitor the transportation of the groups from Laredo to San Antonio and relay updates between parties.
Authorities called him a “longtime leader and organizer” of the smuggling organization. He was involved in at least 10 human smuggling operations for financial gain, the release states.
In total, the organization is believed to have transported more than 900 people in at least 19 operations since May 2021.
Nine of those tractor-trailers were intercepted by Homeland Security Investigations and each of those trailers contained between 30 to more than 100 people.
“This human smuggling organization put the lives of hundreds of migrants in jeopardy by transporting them across south Texas in tractor trailers,” said U.S. Attorney Jaime Esparza for the Western District of Texas. “It is important that people like this defendant, who endanger those lives for profit, are held accountable by our justice system.”