Two men tied to a deadly migrant smuggling run that ended on a South Texas highway are headed to federal prison for decades, after a Del Rio judge handed down sentences totaling more than 29 years this week. The defendants, 29-year-old Jerry Lee Anderson of Spring and 25-year-old Orlin Wilfredo Padilla‑Murillo, a Honduran national, received separate long terms following a multi‑agency probe into a failed October 2022 operation that left two migrants dead and two others badly hurt. Prosecutors say the case stretched across several South Texas jurisdictions and into the Houston area, where money and driver recruitment were allegedly coordinated.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas announced that Chief U.S. District Judge Alia Moses sentenced Anderson to 168 months in prison and Padilla‑Murillo to 188 months. Another co‑defendant, Michael Desmond Kennedy, had already been given 87 months. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Western District of Texas, the October 2022 crash killed a load driver and two illegal aliens and left two additional migrants seriously injured.
How investigators say the ring worked
Federal agents with ICE Homeland Security Investigations in Del Rio followed a trail of WhatsApp chats and CashApp payments that they say tied Padilla‑Murillo and Anderson to multiple failed smuggling runs and to the recruitment of load drivers. On social media, the office of the U.S. Attorney's Office said Padilla‑Murillo admitted that he recruited drivers and was paid about $3,500 per person to move migrants from Eagle Pass toward the Houston area. Phone evidence linked the defendants to stops where migrants were found hidden in trailers and recreational vehicles.
Prosecutors say the smuggling organization moved at least 100 people for profit, charged roughly $10,000 per person on average, and pulled in more than $1 million in net proceeds. The deadly 2022 run, they argue, was not a one‑off, but part of a broader pipeline feeding migrants from the border deeper into Texas.
Part of a wider enforcement push
Officials cast the sentences as one piece of a larger push under "Operation Take Back America," a multi‑agency effort aimed at dismantling cartel‑linked smuggling routes in the Western District of Texas. Earlier Del Rio cases tied to nearby Eagle Pass have produced similarly stiff outcomes, as detailed in Hoodline’s prior coverage of an Eagle Pass smuggling case that drew more than 17 years in Del Rio.
Legal notes
The case was heard in U.S. District Court in Del Rio and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett Miner, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. One additional co‑defendant is still set to be sentenced on April 7. Federal law sharply increases penalties when smuggling crimes result in death or serious bodily injury, a reality now reflected in the lengthy terms handed down in this case.
