Mexican national sentenced to 11 years for armed human smuggling operation

A Mexican national was sentenced Monday to 11 years in prison for her role in a large-scale human smuggling operation that moved hundreds of people across the U.S.-Mexico border while robbing them at gunpoint and knifepoint, the Justice Department announced.

Ofelia Hernandez Salas, 64, of Mexicali, Mexico, and her co-conspirators facilitated the illegal entry of hundreds of aliens from and through more than a dozen countries, charging them as much as tens of thousands of dollars to cross the border, according to court documents. The individuals traveled from and through Bangladesh, Yemen, Pakistan, Eritrea, India, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Russia, Egypt, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico.

The smuggling network used ladders to scale the border fence, directed people through holes beneath it and used planks to cross waterways, prosecutors said. Beyond the smuggling operation itself, Hernandez Salas and her associates robbed people of cash, cellphones and other belongings, often while armed with guns and knives.

“Transnational human smuggling at a large scale directly threatens our national security,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a statement. He said Hernandez Salas and her co-conspirators endangered communities by illegally bringing foreign nationals into the United States, stripping immigration authorities of the ability to properly vet them and compounding the danger migrants already faced by robbing them at gunpoint and knifepoint.

Hernandez Salas and co-conspirator Raul Saucedo-Huipio were arrested in Mexico in March 2023 pursuant to a U.S. extradition request, the Justice Department said. In December 2024, Hernandez Salas pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to bring an alien to the United States and three substantive counts of bringing an alien to the United States for commercial benefit or private financial gain. She is subject to deportation upon completing her sentence. Saucedo-Huipio also pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing in June 2026, according to prosecutors.

U.S. Attorney Timothy Courchaine for the District of Arizona said the case exemplified the daily work being done through Joint Task Force Alpha to secure the southern border and protect the American people.

The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations in Yuma with assistance from U.S. Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service, working alongside HSI Tijuana and INTERPOL. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs assisted in securing Hernandez Salas’ arrest and extradition from Mexico.

To date, Joint Task Force Alpha has secured more than 450 arrests and more than 400 U.S. convictions in smuggling and trafficking cases, the department said.

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