10 suspected traffickers go to trials

MEXICO CITY -- Ten members of a smuggling ring blamed in the deaths of 19 migrants who were abandoned at a truck stop in Texas have been ordered to stand trial in Mexico on organized crime and immigrant trafficking charges, the Justice Department Tuesday.

A federal judge ruled there was enough evidence to warrant trials for the nine men and one woman who prosecutors said belonged to a ring allegedly headed by Karla Patricia Chavez, a Honduran woman awaiting trial in the United States. The 10 suspects were arrested in Aug. 8 raids in the northern and central states of Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosi and Guanajuato.

More than 70 migrants from Mexico, Central America and the Dominican Republic were being transported from the Texas city of Harlingen to Houston in the airless trailer of an 18-wheeler on the night of May 13. Authorities found 17 immigrants dead in and around the trailer outside a Victoria, Texas, truck stop.

Two others died after being hospitalized. The victims, including a 5-year-old Mexican boy, died from dehydration, hyperthermia and suffocation.