Guatemalan woman sentenced to 3 years for South Texas human smuggling scheme

HOUSTON — A Guatemalan woman was sentenced Friday to three years in federal prison for conspiracy and human smuggling related to a scheme to smuggle people from India into the United States.

This sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson, Southern District of Texas along with Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. This investigation was conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), with the assistance of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Border Patrol.

Rosa Astrid Umanzor-Lopez, 36, was sentenced April 22 by U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr. to 36 months in prison. She is expected to face deportation proceedings following her release from prison.

Umanzor-Lopez was extradited to the United States from Guatemala and later pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States for profit and human smuggling.

According to court documents, Umanzor-Lopez admitted that between January 2011 and her arrest in Guatemala on Feb. 4, 2014, she and other conspirators recruited individuals in India who were willing to pay large sums of money to be smuggled into the United States.

For their smuggling operations, Umanzor-Lopez and her co-conspirators used a network of facilitators to transport groups from India through South America and Central America and then into the United States by air, automobiles, water craft and foot. Umanzor-Lopez also admitted that many of these smuggling events involved illegal entry into the United States via the U.S.-Mexico border near McAllen and Laredo, Texas.  

Three other members of the conspiracy have also been convicted and sentenced, and a fourth remains a fugitive.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Leo J. Leo III and Casey MacDonald, Southern District of Texas, along with the Trial Attorney Ann Marie E. Ursini of the Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section. The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs provided significant support with the defendant’s extradition.

This investigation was conducted under the Extraterritorial Criminal Travel Strike Force (ECT) program, a joint partnership between the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and HSI. The ECT program focuses on human smuggling networks that may present particular national security or public safety risks, or present grave humanitarian concerns. ECT has dedicated investigative, intelligence and prosecutorial resources. ECT coordinates and receives assistance from other U.S. government agencies and foreign law enforcement authorities.