Human Cargo Grasps for Life

The Story So Far

Smugglers packed more than 40 illegal immigrants into the unventilated cargo compartment of an 18-wheeler for a 12-hour ride to Dallas. As the Texas sun beat down on the trailer, the migrants ran out of water. And air. As the temperature inside rose to 150 degrees, some of them began to lose consciousness. No quiero morir, one whimpered. I don’t want to die. A carpenter from Mexico City whispered a prayer: “I’m in your hands, God. Take care of my family.” Then his head lolled back and he closed his eyes.

*

It was midafternoon by the time the big rig rolled into Love’s truck stop off I-20 in Dallas. As soon as the drivers climbed out, they heard fists pounding on the inside of the trailer walls.

Jason Sprague lifted the latch. The cargo doors flew wide.

More than 40 illegal immigrants -- packed into the unventilated cargo compartment 12 hours earlier -- tumbled out.

A woman, sobbing, hurled her fists at Sprague’s co-driver, Troy Dock. Others, unable to move, slumped on the tarmac. Some staggered to a tap and filled their cupped hands with water.

Half-conscious, Luciano Alcocer, a carpenter from Mexico City, first felt the air and then, somehow, he was out under the open sky.

Still inside the sweltering trailer, 16-year-old Edson Rojas was blinded by the burst of sunlight, then battered by his companions as they stampeded past him.

Get out, he told himself. Fast!

On hands and knees, he clawed toward the doors. The cargo boxes shifted. A crevice opened, and he toppled into it. He screamed the only English word he could summon:

“Help!”

Outside, Sprague and Dock were terrified. “We’ve got to go!” Dock said.

Still in the trailer, Rojas pushed and shoved at the boxes, but his muscles were jelly.

Suddenly, the youth heard a slam, and the trailer was black again.

Someone had closed the doors!

Rojas peered over the boxes that entrapped him. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that he was not alone.

Jose Gaston Ramirez, still in his red Calvin Klein T-shirt, lay motionless.

Pioquinto Cabrera, stripped to his briefs, was curled like a sleeping baby near the doors.

Both dead, Rojas thought.

The trailer was a coffin now -- and he was locked inside.

*

As Dock drove the 18-wheeler north, he panicked.

What if the truck stop had a surveillance camera? What if it recorded all those half-dead immigrants falling out of his freight compartment?

In the passenger seat, Sprague wondered about something else. Could there still be some illegal immigrants in the back?

Dock knew of a truck stop in the little town of Anna, Texas. “We can stop there,” he said.

It was another 50 miles away.

When they finally pulled into the Drivers Travel Mart, Sprague popped open the cargo doors and caught a glimpse of the first body. Among the boxes of medical equipment inside, he saw two more.

“Troy! There’s still people in here,” he called, then slammed the doors shut.

Dialing their company, Boyd Logistics, Sprague recited their cover story: Somehow -- they couldn’t imagine how it happened -- some illegal immigrants had gotten into the freight compartment.

The company president called police.

At his home on the outskirts of Dallas, David Fry, investigator for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, got an urgent call: A tractor-trailer smuggling case. Could be dead bodies.

Fry, 34, had followed his father into the U.S. Border Patrol before switching to INS, and was all too familiar with the ways that migrants die crossing the border. Rarely were their smugglers caught and, when they were, the punishment was usually less than 10 years in prison: It never seemed severe enough.

Fry raced toward the scene. This time, he would try to make sure that the culprits didn’t get off lightly.

Texas State Trooper Kam Pierce beat Fry to the Drivers Mart. The trooper swung open one of the trailer’s double doors. Immediately, the overpowering heat inside hit him. So did the stench, a rank mix of vomit, sweat and urine.

He climbed inside. To his left, a man stripped down to his underwear was curled in a corner. Pierce grabbed a leg and shook it. The joints were stiff.

Pioquinto Cabrera was dead.

The trooper heaved himself onto the boxes and spotted two more. A man in a red T-shirt. A skinny teenager.

Pierce crawled over to the man and felt in vain for a pulse. Jose Gaston Ramirez was gone.

The teenager was probably dead too, Pierce figured. Then he thought that he saw the kid’s stomach move. He wriggled over and felt for a pulse.

Nothing.

The trooper put his ear to the kid’s mouth. A wisp of breath brushed his skin.

“Hey!” Pierce yelled. “We’ve got one that’s alive!”

Pierce grabbed the boy by the shoulders, dragging him toward the door. Edson Rojas’ eyes were frozen open.

“Don’t give up, kid,” Pierce thought.

With another trooper’s help, Pierce lifted the boy out and laid him on the asphalt. As a police video camera recorded the scene, Pierce sloshed water onto him.

Soon, the scene teemed with investigators. Not needed there, Fry headed for the Collin County sheriff’s office, where Dock and Sprague had been taken for questioning.

County investigator Parrish Cundiff led Dock into an interrogation room. Around the corner, Fry watched on a video monitor.

Dock was playing dumb. Maybe the illegal immigrants sneaked in when he and Sprague fell asleep at a truck stop in El Paso, he suggested.

“Let me explain something to you,” Cundiff said in his deep Texas drawl. “You’re a small-time guy. Who I’m after is the guy that sent you.”

Dock stuck to his story.

Cundiff tried again. Two were dead, maybe more.

“That’s a lot,” he said.

“One’s a lot,” Dock replied.

Unless he talked, gave up a name, Cundiff said, “any charges that may come out of this ... are Troy’s and Jason’s. OK?”

Finally, Dock caved.

“I just know one name,” he said. “It’s just a first name.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s Pat.”

Watching on the video monitor, Fry thought: “I know this guy.”

Twice in the last two years, truckers caught hauling illegal immigrants said they were working for a smuggler named Pat -- Ruben Patrick Valdes. He was a major figure in transporting human cargo.

Not long ago, an illegal immigrant might lay out a couple hundred dollars for a raft ride across the Rio Grande or a lift to Los Angeles.

In the 1990s, when U.S. agents began choking off border-crossing points, immigrants turned to coyotes -- smugglers who knew other, often more perilous, ways across. Between 1997 and 1999, the number of intercepted illegal immigrants who had employed a smuggler increased 80%.

The fees smugglers charged rose, as did the danger. Migrants drowned crawling through storm drains, died in the desert after being abandoned by guides.

Independent coyotes were being displaced by smuggling networks with recruiters, stash houses, foot guides, drivers. The money was so good that drug traffickers got into the action.

When the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994, cross-border truck traffic multiplied, opening a new way for smugglers to move people.

Using tractor-trailers became Pat Valdes’ trademark.

At the Collin County sheriff’s office, Sprague had also confessed. Now, he and Dock were trying to be helpful.

Dock offered to set up Valdes. He dialed a number in Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican city where Valdes lived. Investigators listened in.

“Hey, Pat,” Dock said. “I’m up here at the sheriff’s office.... They’re asking me about all the people.... We opened the door and a couple people just fell out and a couple people were dead.”

“Died! That’s crazy, man,” Valdes said. “Well, I don’t know anything about it. I didn’t have nothing to do with it, you know what I mean?”

For 10 minutes they talked, the conversation going nowhere.

Finally, Valdes said, “Are they listening to you?” Then he hung up.

The investigators had a prime suspect now -- but he was beyond their reach in Mexico.

Cundiff’s questioning was all but done. At one point he had snapped, telling Dock, “I don’t want you to sit here and tell me ... you’re just an innocent victim. The innocent victims aren’t here.”

Two of the migrants were dead; Alcocer and several others who tumbled out of the trailer at Love’s truck stop were being treated at Dallas hospitals.

And at North Central Medical Center in McKinney, Texas, doctors fed fluids intravenously to Rojas, the boy the trooper had pulled from the truck. They were fighting to save him from respiratory arrest, renal failure, severe dehydration and shock.

They didn’t know if he would make it.

Next week: Investigators set their sights on Pat Valdes.

*

The Sources for This Story

The scene at Love’s truck stop is based on jailhouse interviews with Troy Dock and Jason Sprague, on videos of their police interrogations, and on interviews with and court testimony of migrants, including Luciano Alcocer. The scene inside the truck cab is from interviews with and interrogations of the drivers. Details at the Drivers Travel Mart are from the drivers, interviews with Texas State Trooper Kam Pierce and INS investigator David Fry, and a state police video of the scene. Details of Sprague’s call to Boyd Logistics come from the Sprague interview and interrogation, and from a deposition by company President Keith Boyd. Details of the Dock and Sprague interrogations and their call to Pat Valdes are from Sheriff’s Department recordings. Background on the smuggling business comes from U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner, Joe Greene of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, seven other investigators and prosecutors, and government reports and court testimony.