A federal grand jury has indicted 11 people. That means a group of citizens looked at the evidence. They agreed there was enough proof to file charges. Prosecutors say the 11 helped run a smuggling ring. That ring led to the deaths of 7 migrants. The migrants died inside a locked shipping container. The container sat on a train headed for San Antonio.

Workers found six bodies inside the container. It was parked at a Laredo rail yard. A seventh victim was found near train tracks in San Antonio. It is one of the deadliest migrant smuggling cases linked to South Texas in recent memory. It shows how deadly train smuggling can be.

Court papers say the deaths happened in May 2026. Smugglers loaded the migrants into the container in Del Rio. Workers had stacked the container on top of another one. It had no windows. It had no air conditioning. No one could open it from the inside.

The train left Del Rio. It rolled toward San Antonio. Outside heat that day hit 88 to 92 degrees. Inside the sealed container, the air got much hotter than that.

The train stopped in San Antonio. Smugglers opened the container door. They found the migrants in bad shape. One man fell out onto the ground. The smugglers shut the door again. They ran off and left him behind. He later died near the tracks.

The train kept rolling toward Laredo. Six more migrants stayed trapped inside. A Union Pacific worker found their bodies. This happened on May 10 at the Laredo rail yard. The Webb County Medical Examiner's Office says heat stroke killed them. That means their bodies got too hot and shut down.

The victims came from Mexico and Honduras. One of the seven who died was a 14-year-old boy. El Tejano is not naming the victims. Their names have not been made public. Each migrant, or their family, paid smugglers to make the trip. The price ran from $1,500 to $10,000 per person.

U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons talked about the final moments inside the container. "One of those individuals frantically contacted their family as they were dying from the sweltering heat in that container," Simmons said.

Federal agents say the ring used freight trains a lot. They moved migrants deeper into Texas after they crossed the border. Agents say the ring had been running since 2023. Cases like this show how smugglers keep finding new ways to move people. They do it even when the risk of death is high.

A grand jury in Del Rio filed the charges on July 24, 2026. Nine of the 11 people are now in jail. One man was arrested in Del Rio back in May, right after the deaths were found. Police arrested the other eight over several days in late July. Those arrests happened across central and south Texas.

Two people are still on the run. Police are looking for Karina Garcia, 37, of Del Rio. They are also looking for Seferino Huerta-Casillas, 35, of Mexico.

Nine people are already in jail. Two of them are from Del Rio. They are Mayra Alejandra Huerta, 32, and Edson Alejandro Perez, 18. Eric Hernandez, 40, is from Eagle Pass. He also faces charges. Two more are from Honduras. They are Jonas Ulloa-Aguilera, 25, and Franklin Williams Ayala Aguilera, 30. Three more are from Mexico. They are Maria Norma Neri de Moran, 56, Damian Huerta Analucas, 55, and Rosario Cristal Lopez-Saldana, 26. One more is from Guatemala. His name is Pascual Raymundo Loarca, 34.

Each person faces two federal charges. The first charge is conspiracy. That means police say they planned the crime together. The full charge is conspiracy to move migrants in a way that caused death. The second charge says they helped carry out that same crime. Both charges can bring up to life in prison.

It is not yet clear when the case will go to trial. The case is still moving through federal court.