SAN DIEGO (AP) â Two smugglers were sentenced to federal prison on Friday for leading three sisters from Mexico into California, where they froze to death in a mountain snowstorm.
Cecilio Rios-Quiñones, 38, and his brother, 23-year-old Ricardo Rios-Quiñones, received 5 1/2 years each in U.S. District Court in San Diego.
They pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy and other charges.
Prosecutors said the men, who are from Chihuahua, led the women across the border on Feb. 10, 2020, and were in a rugged area near Mount Laguna, about a dozen miles north of the border, when a snowstorm struck. The woman, from Oaxaca, died from hypothermia.