A Texas man, previously on the lam, has been slapped with a near 10-year prison sentence for smuggling over 65 undocumented immigrants into the United States. Daniel Cantu Jr., a 30-year-old from Mission, Texas was handed a 110-month sentence by U.S. District Judge Drew B. Tipton, after pleading guilty last August to his role in a human smuggling conspiracy, as announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The chase ended for Cantu this February after he initially skipped out on his late 2023 sentencing and scorning the court, he then continued his illicit trade in the Rio Grande Valley, engaging in further alien transport while under bond. The U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani described the defendant's organization responsible for shuttling more than 200 aliens as part of a wider conspiracy, "The transportation of undocumented migrants across the U.S. southern border is a rapidly growing threat," said Hamdani, according to a statement from the prosecution. Hamdani added, with the organization's exploits masked behind the façade of legitimate transit.

Along with Cantu, the operation implicated Jose Guadalupe Garcia Jr., Jesus Francisco Mares, and Jose Antonio Cardona as the coordinators behind this orchestration of clandestine human cargo across checkpoints and borders; from August 2021 to April 2022, authorities intercepted their efforts multiple times, noting that the majority of the detainees were stashed in commercial trailers. Garcia and Mares have already received their sentences, 36 and 15 months respectively, while Cardona still evades capture with an active warrant on his name.

Cantu, meanwhile, won't see the other side of prison bars until he's nearly forty, his future marred by a conviction trailing three years of supervised release once he finishes his stretch in the federal pen a stretch which according to the courts, reflects the serious nature of his smuggling operations. As of now, the Mission man awaits the transfer to a Bureau of Prisons facility that has yet to be determined meanwhile, Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Marshals Service carry on with their work to dismantle similar threats to national integrity.