Driver Found Not Guilty of Smuggling 67 Aliens

A Chula Vista man was found not guilty of alien smuggling charges Thursday after he told a federal jury he didn’t know there were 67 people in the back of the truck he was driving.

The jury deliberated for about 90 minutes Thursday before acquitting Hector Manuel Perez-Fregoso, 29, of charges that he was illegally smuggling Mexican citizens into the United States last Dec. 7 when the 67 people were discovered in the back of the tractor-trailer at the San Clemente Border Patrol checkpoint.

“The jurors told me the government didn’t have the evidence to prove my client knew he was transporting undocumented aliens,” said Cynthia Aaron of the Federal Defenders Office, who represented Perez-Fregoso in the two-day trial. “His defense was that he didn’t know there were people in truck.”

Perez-Fregoso left his house in Chula Vista on the evening of Dec. 6 and walked to the truck, which he had parked on a nearby street, Aaron said. He never looked in the back and drove non-stop until he pulled off Interstate 5 at the truck scales near the San Clemente checkpoint, Aaron said.

At the time, the truck scales were closed, Aaron said. “If he wanted to, he could have cruised right through,” she said. “Instead, he enters a brightly lit area and calls attention to himself. That was part of our defense.”

Immigration and Naturalization Service agents, who had received a tip that the truck was carrying illegal aliens, searched it and arrested Perez-Fregoso.

He claimed during the trial that he was driving the truck to Los Angeles to pick up a load of furniture at the instructions of the truck’s owner.

However, the owner, who was called as a prosecution witness, testified that he had not sent Perez-Fregoso to Los Angeles, but instead was waiting for him in Tijuana, where the two were to meet the following morning. Perez-Fregoso didn’t show up in Tijuana because he had been arrested the night before while making the run to Los Angeles, prosecutors said.

Two of the 67 aliens testified--one on the witness stand and one through a deposition--and both said they had never seen Perez-Fregoso before the court case, Aaron said. “The people said they got in and didn’t stop until they got arrested at the checkpoint,” she said.