PHOENIX – Seven people were sentenced Monday for their involvement in a large human smuggling operation in El Mirage at the beginning of the year, according to officials with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix.
Oscar Daniel Hernandez-Juarez, 23, Antonio Cruz-Ramirez, 19, Mauricio Gerardo Aguilar-Espinoza, 25, Jorge Zaragoza-Alvarado, 24, Pedro Martin Luna-Fuentes 25, Cesar Valentin Garcia-Aguilera, 32, and Jaime Zamora-Martinez, 38, all from Mexico, were given sentences ranging from five to ten years for using anc carrying a firearm during an act of violence.
According to authorities, on January 31, police responded to a residence on West Columbine Drive after receiving an emergency call.
Officers reportedly found 37 men and one woman stripped down to their underwear inside the two-bedroom home.
Police noted that the windows had been boarded up and there was “a foul smell present,” according to authorities. Further searches resulted in the recovery of a knife, a gun, and two baseball bats, officials said.
The undocumented immigrants reportedly were being held hostage for ransom money and were given little water or food, according to authorities.
Police discovered that seven of the group in the house were actually the suspects, who had stripped down to their underwear before police arrived to blend in with the group.
The suspects were detained and investigators found that they had used rifles, baseball bats, and other weapons to intimidate and terrorize their captives, officials said.
According to authorities, the hostages in the drop house told investigators that the suspects would threaten to “chop off” their body parts or break limbs with baseball bats if they didn’t receive ransom money.
The suspects would also reportedly “rack” or pull back the slide of their rifles as an intimidation measure and would threaten to dump their captives in the desert to die.
Hernandez-Juarez and Zamora-Martinez received ten year sentences, Aguilar-Espinoza, Zaragoza-Alvarado and Luna-Fuentes were sentenced to eight years each, and Garcia-Aguilera and Cruz-Ramirez got five years each, all to be served in federal prison.
