Mexican national sentenced to 87 months for managing border smuggling ring

A Mexican national who served as a manager in an extensive human smuggling operation was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison for his role in moving hundreds of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border while robbing them at gunpoint, the Justice Department announced.

Raul Saucedo-Huipio, 51, of Mexicali, Mexico, pleaded guilty in March 2026 to conspiracy to bring an alien to the United States and a substantive count of bringing an alien to the United States. He was extradited from Mexico, where he and a co-conspirator were arrested in March 2023 pursuant to a U.S. extradition request.

Prosecutors said Saucedo-Huipio and his co-conspirators operated the smuggling network between 2018 and 2022, charging migrants as much as tens of thousands of dollars each to illegally cross the border. The organization moved well over 200 people, according to the indictment, with the actual number believed to be significantly higher. Migrants traveled from and through countries including Bangladesh, Yemen, Pakistan, Eritrea, India, Russia, Egypt, Brazil, Colombia and several Central and South American nations before reaching the United States.

As a manager in the operation, prosecutors said Saucedo-Huipio routinely brandished a firearm in his waistband before border crossings. The organization provided ladders to scale border fencing, identified holes in barriers for migrants to crawl through and used wooden planks for waterway crossings. In one instance, prosecutors said, Saucedo-Huipio oversaw a crossing in which three small children were made to walk across a plank laid over a body of water. Beyond moving migrants, he and his co-conspirators also robbed migrants of money, cell phones and other belongings, often while armed with guns and knives.

“Human smuggling is not a victimless crime. It is a direct assault on our national security and an exploitation of some of the world’s most vulnerable people,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

A co-conspirator, Ofelia Hernandez-Salas, pleaded guilty in December 2024 and was sentenced May 13 to 11 years in prison for her role in the organization.

The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations in Yuma, Arizona, with assistance from U.S. Border Patrol, the FBI, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, and the U.S. Marshals Service. It was prosecuted under Joint Task Force Alpha, the Justice Department’s initiative targeting human smuggling and trafficking networks linked to cartels and transnational criminal organizations throughout the Americas.

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