U.S. v. Rodriguez

• Decision Date: 15 December 2008
• Docket Number: No. 06-20774.,06-20774.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Victor RODRIGUEZ, Also Known as Victor Sanchez Rodriguez, Also Known as Don Victor; Rosa Maria Serrataz, Also Known as Rosa Maria Armijo, Also Known as Rosa Maria Gonzalez, Also Known as Rosa Maria Serrato-Armijo, Also Known as Rosa Sarrata Gonzales; Emma Sapata Rodriguez, Also Known as Emma Sapata Rodriguez, Also Known as Dona Emma, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

553 F.3d 380

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Victor RODRIGUEZ, Also Known as Victor Sanchez Rodriguez, Also Known as Don Victor; Rosa Maria Serrataz, Also Known as Rosa Maria Armijo, Also Known as Rosa Maria Gonzalez, Also Known as Rosa Maria Serrato-Armijo, Also Known as Rosa Sarrata Gonzales; Emma Sapata Rodriguez, Also Known as Emma Sapata Rodriguez, Also Known as Dona Emma, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 06-20774.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

December 15, 2008.

Kathlyn Giannaula Snyder, James Lee Turner, Asst. U.S. Attys., Gregg Jeffrey Costa (argued), Houston, TX, for U.S.

Steven Jay Rozan (argued), Steven Rozan & Associates, Houston, TX, for Victor and Emma Rodriguez.

Joe A. Salinas, III, Winston Earle Cochran, Jr. (argued), Houston, TX, for Serrataz.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Before JONES, Chief Judge, and GARWOOD and SMITH, Circuit Judges.

JERRY E. SMITH, Circuit Judge:

Victor Rodriguez ("Victor"), Emma Sapata Rodriguez ("Emma"), and Rosa Maria Serrataz ("Serrata")¹ appeal convictions related to their participation in a scheme to transport a large number of illegal aliens across the Mexican border. We affirm.

I. Introduction

A. Facts

1. The Smuggling Conspiracy

The government alleged that Victor, Emma, and Serrata were part of a loose organization of illegal-alien smugglers, or "coyotes," operating in South Texas. Within that organization, their function was to pick up Latin American illegal aliens who had already come as far as the Mexican border, bring them across the Rio Grande River into the area of Brownsville, Texas, shelter them for short periods of time, and hand them over to other coyotes responsible for transporting them north to Houston.

The plan was orchestrated by Karla Chavez-Joya, a Honduran living in the United States, who connected coyotes such as Victor, Emma, and Serrata to others who would escort the aliens northward. Typically, it appears, Chavez-Joya arranged for groups of aliens to be loaded into a truck trailer, driven through the immigration checkpoint near Sarita, Texas, and transferred into vans that would take them to Houston. Abelardo Flores, Jr., recruited drivers for Chavez-Joya, looking especially for non-Hispanic drivers with non-Texas license plates. One such driver was Tyrone Williams, who agreed in early May 2003 to transport a number of aliens in his truck trailer for a fee. The pickup site for the run was to be near Harlingen, Texas, and the present defendants were among the coyotes who funneled the aliens into the United States. Of note here are the illegal aliens brought across the border by Victor, Emma, and Serrata.

2. Victor and Emma

The aliens who testified against Victor and Emma told similar stories. They began their journeys in their native countries, where they hired local smugglers to bring them north to Matamoros, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville. There, the aliens typically contacted Victor and Emma at phone numbers provided by the local smugglers, though at least one alien met with Victor in Mexico. Victor, workers of his, or his son with Emma, Victor Jesus Rodriguez ("Victor Jesus"), then escorted the aliens across the river in inflated tubes and took them to Victor and Emma's house. The one exception was a small boy deemed too weak to cross the river in that way; he was brought through the border checkpoint by Emma, bearing her grandson's identification papers, along with a number of other small children whom Emma instructed to refer to the boy as their brother.

Once across the border and in Victor's and Emma's hands, the aliens made financial arrangements for transportation north to Houston. In each case, Victor and Emma demanded payment of approximately $2000, with half payable immediately and the remainder payable when the alien reached Houston. Victor and Emma typically gave the aliens access to phones for calling relatives to arrange wire transfer of the payment.

After the Rodriguezes received the first installment, they secreted the aliens in a series of houses, trailers, and sheds in and around Brownsville, sometimes with their respective parties, sometimes together with other illegal aliens brought into the United States by the Rodriguezes or others. Most ominously, a number of aliens reported being kept for some time in a densely crowded house with no room to sit down or sleep. Some of them called the Rodriguezes to complain about the conditions there, and the Rodriguezes moved them out of the house for a night.

There was discussion, naturally, of the means of transportation. The aliens were typically offered a choice between going north on foot or riding in a truck. Victor and Emma steered the aliens, even ones who initially preferred to walk, in the direction of the truck, saying they would be safer, move faster, and be harder to detect. A number of them expressed concern with riding a long distance in a truck trailer, but Victor and Emma assured at least six of them that they would be riding in the truck's cab, not the trailer. At least one alien left his conversation with Victor under the impression that the truck would take him directly to Houston with no stopping.

Ultimately, the relevant aliens smuggled by Victor and Emma, together with a large number of others, were brought in vans— some by Victor Jesus personally—to an increasingly crowded field outside Harlingen late at night on May 13, 2003. Despite Victor's and Emma's assurances that several of their aliens could ride to Houston in the truck's cab, none of the Rodriguezes stayed at the loading area or made any other effort to separate their aliens from the others; Flores, who loaded the trailer, stated that he had never heard of Victor or Emma at the time. Victor and Emma reserved the minor alien from the trailer trip, apparently planning to send him to Houston separately.

3. Serrata

Meanwhile, Serrata was smuggling an alien of her own. In previous years, she had run an extensive alien-smuggling operation that included her sons, Antonio Gonzales ("Antonio") and Ramiro Gonzalez [sic] ("Ramiro"), and a number of others. She was close to Victor and Emma and had raised her sons to believe that Victor and Emma were their uncle and aunt, though in fact there was no family relationship. Her sons reported at trial, however, that she had since entered a sort of semi-retirement, working in her house as a hairdresser and leaving the business of human trafficking to her sons and to Octavio Torres-Ortega (usually referred to as "Tavo"), a former worker of hers. As of May 2003, Antonio and Ramiro typically worked with Tavo (though Antonio reported having smuggled aliens with Victor and Emma). But when Jose Roldan Castro ("Roldan") contacted her, she took it upon herself to have him smuggled into the United States.

Roldan approached the Mexican border much as did the other aliens but was put in touch with Serrata. Roldan's brother at some point sent Serrata $1000, ostensibly to be passed along as a bribe for the border guard (though there was no evidence of a bribe). Serrata crossed the border, met Roldan, and set up a convoluted series of exchanges, secret signals, and car rides from place to place that eventually took him into the United States, where Serrata met him again and took him to her house. Roldan stayed at Serrata's household for some time, meeting Antonio and Ramiro and eating with all of them at the family table. When Tavo visited Serrata, she introduced him to Roldan as the man who would take him to Houston.

Serrata demanded another $850 from Roldan for travel to Houston. Roldan's brother sent that money to Serrata as well; she gave it to Roldan to give to Tavo. Eventually she handed Roldan over to Tavo, who deposited him with the crowd of aliens being readied for transportation in Williams's trailer.

Roldan was under the impression that Serrata and Tavo were working together in some way to arrange his transportation north. Tavo told Roldan he would be taken to Houston by trailer. Roldan doubted the safety of that plan and told Tavo, but Tavo said the ride in the trailer would be short and that the aliens would be transferred to vans after the checkpoint. Roldan was taken to the loading site on May 13 as well.

Antonio and Ramiro worked for Tavo regularly and were to assist him in escorting the aliens north. Antonio typically assisted Tavo by picking up aliens unloaded from trailers that passed the checkpoint and driving them the rest of the way to Houston. Ramiro's usual function was to pick up impounded vehicles and return them to Tavo, but on this occasion he was to drive aliens to Houston with his brother.

Tavo procured vans for them to drive and instructed them to meet him. As they understood their job, they were to drive north, meet the trailer, load the aliens into their vans, and continue the rest of the way north to Houston. Late at night on May 13, Antonio and Ramiro woke their mother and told her to take them to meet Tavo at a parking lot. She agreed, drove them to the meeting place, and left them there with instruction to "be careful." Antonio said that Serrata briefly spoke with Tavo there. Tavo gave Antonio Chavez's phone number and told him to coordinate the details of the transfer with her.

4. The Trailer

Williams's truck arrived at the field near Harlingen after dark, and Flores herded the more than seventy aliens into the trailer. Flores instructed Williams to set the trailer's refrigerator at fifty-five degrees, and Williams acknowledged. Some of the aliens brought by the Rodriguezes knocked on the passenger side of the cab, expecting to be let in for the ride, but the door did not open; they had to rush into the trailer before the doors were closed.

The pickup site near Harlingen is a drive of about one hour and forty-five minutes from the Sarita checkpoint, which is just south of Robstown on US-77. The place where the...