Smuggling Boat Captains Sentenced to Over 4 Years in Prison

The sentencing follows a 2022 incident where a boat carrying migrants capsized off the California coast, resulting in three deaths.

Jorge Armando Preciado-Vasquez, 30, and Alexis Martinez-Preciado, 20, the captains of a boat that capsized off the California coast last year while smuggling migrants out of Mexico, were sentenced to over 4 years each in federal prison.
The boat, carrying seven adults and a child, capsized off Imperial Beach over Thanksgiving weekend in 2022, resulting in the deaths of a 39-year-old woman and a 47-year-old man from Mexico, along with a still-unidentified young woman from Guatemala.
Hundreds of maritime smuggling operations occur every year off California’s coast, claiming numerous lives.
In March, eight people died when two boats overturned off the coast of San Diego, and in July, a Mexican man was sentenced to 15 years in prison for coordinating a smuggling effort that left 13 people dead.
Earlier this month, eight people died when the driver of a car suspected of carrying smuggled migrants fled police and smashed into an oncoming vehicle on a South Texas highway.