HOUSTON — A Guatemalan woman was sentenced Friday to three years in federal prison for conspiracy and human smuggling related to a scheme to smuggle people from India into the United States.
Rosa Astrid Umanzor-Lopez, 36, was sentenced April 22 by U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr. to 36 months in prison. She is expected to face deportation proceedings following her release from prison.
Umanzor-Lopez was extradited to the United States from Guatemala and later pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States for profit and human smuggling.
According to court documents, Umanzor-Lopez admitted that between January 2011 and 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.
For their smuggling operations, Umanzor-Lopez and her co-conspirators used a network of facilitators to transport groups from India through South America and Central America and then into the United States by air, automobiles, water craft and foot. Umanzor-Lopez also admitted that many of these smuggling events involved illegal entry into the United States via the U.S.-Mexico border near McAllen and Laredo, Texas.
Three other members of the conspiracy have also been convicted and sentenced, and a fourth remains a fugitive.