Mexican citizen pleads guilty to accident in California that killed 13 immigrants

A Mexican citizen pleaded guilty to charges of organizing a people-smuggling operation that killed 13 immigrants from that country and Guatemala in a highway accident near the US border two years ago.

José Cruz, 49, a legal permanent resident in the United States and a native of Mexicali, in northern Mexico, pleaded guilty Tuesday before a district court for southern California, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Cruz pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to smuggle illegal immigrants and three for the same reason for profit. His sentencing is scheduled for June, according to the agency.

He recruited drivers, collected payments and organized his partners to blow a hole in the border fence through which two SUVs packed with immigrants slipped into California, according to the Justice Department.

One of those cars, carrying 25 people, collided with a tractor-trailer at a highway junction outside the Holtsville farming community, about 130 miles east of San Diego, California. Thirteen people, including the driver, died in the accident and the 12 survivors were hospitalized, according to authorities.

US Border Patrol agents separately found 19 other migrants from the second SUV huddled in nearby brush after their vehicle inexplicably caught fire.

According to the prosecution, both cars, with seating for eight passengers and devoid of all but two seats to allow more people to crowd, were part of the same smuggling operation.

Another suspected smuggler apprehended in an unrelated incident two weeks after the deadly crash led authorities to Cruz. An alleged accomplice, identified as 49-year-old Froylan Cortez, also from Mexicali, remains at large, according to the Justice Department.

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