A migrant who had been co-piloting a smuggling boat that capsized in rough water off Imperial Beach last year, killing five people onboard, was sentenced Friday to four years and nine monthsin federal prison.
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The 57-month sentence was what San Diego federal court prosecutors were seeking for David Alfonso Barrera Nunez, a 38-year-old Mexican national who pleaded guilty in April to smuggling immigrants for financial gain and smuggling resulting in death. His attorneys had sought 41 months and noted in court documents that he was a hard-working man who was trying to provide for a family living in desperate poverty.
Survivors told authorities they’d boarded the panga-style boat in Rosarito in the evening on Nov. 14, according to court filings. The vessel headed north to the United States, but engine trouble hit.
About 10:30 p.m, U.S. Border Patrol agents were notified that a panga boat was crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, but they couldn’t find it in the thick fog. An hour later, agents in Imperial Beach spotted the vessel and several people emerging from the water.
Some had been trapped, finding a pocket of air when the boat capsized. One man told authorities he’d been able to free his adult granddaughter, but he had remained trapped and injured — a piece of metal had penetrated his leg. Border Patrol agents managed to flip the boat and free him.
A few made it ashore, including Barrera, but they were caught and detained. Agents found four bodies in the water. A fifth body, determined to be that of a co-captain, washed up a week later.
“This case is a reminder that there is no harmless way to participate in human smuggling: If you choose to play a role, you will be held accountable for your actions,” U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said in a news release.
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Some of the survivors told authorities they’d paid roughly $16,000 to be smuggled into the United States.
A sentencing memo filed by Barrera’s defense attorneys said Barrera lived with his partner and their children in abject poverty on the Baja California peninsula, and he was struggling to provide for them, working as a diver extracting clams from the seabed. One wall of their cinderblock home was just plywood. Without plumbing, they relied on rainwater collected on the roof.
The memo states a smuggler told Barrera he could get a lower cost of passage to the United States by working as a deckhand. Barrera agreed and the next day was taken on a 15-hour journey north to Tijuana. He only much later realized he was expected to captain the boat.
During the trip north to the United States, the single-outboard motor died, and workarounds and stop-gaps only made the problem worse, the memo states. They said Barrera wanted to turn back, but they pressed on. The failing boat flipped when it reached the surf.
“He has nightmares of someone screaming,” Barrera’s defense attorneys wrote in the memo. “He imagines what he could have or should have done to intervene. He thinks daily of the families’ loss.”
Migrants who died were identified as Bartolo Baltazar Baltazar, Luis Humberto Mazariegos de Leon, Hector Gomez Lopez and Margarita Espinosa Castellanos. The co-captain whose body later washed ashore was identified as Jose Angel Vera Romero.
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