TEXAS
A Guatemala woman plead guilty today to human smuggling charges in connection with her role in a scheme to smuggle illegal immigrants from India into the United States, officials announced.
On April 23, 2015, Rosa Astrid Umanzor-Lopez, 36, of Guatemala, was extradited to the United States from Guatemala to face one count of conspiracy to smuggle India citizens for profit and five counts of human smuggling charges in Texas.
At the plea hearing, Umanzor-Lopez admitted that from January 2011 and up until her arrest in Guatemala on Feb. 4, 2014, she and other conspirators recruited individuals in India who were willing to pay large sums of money to be smuggled into the United States, according to officials.
For their smuggling operations, officials said Umanzor-Lopez and her co-conspirators used a network of facilitators to transport groups of undocumented migrants from India through South America and Central America and then into the United States by air travel, automobiles, water craft and foot, according to officials.
Many of these smuggling events involved illegal entry into the United States via the U.S.-Mexico border near McAllen and Laredo, Texas, officials said.
To this date, three co-conspirators have been convicted and sentenced.
Umanzor-Lopez’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 4 in Houston.