A federal judge on Thursday sentenced two Baja California cousins to more than four years each in prison for their roles in piloting a smuggling boat that overturned and left three people dead last year just off the shoreline in Imperial Beach.
Jorge Armando Preciado-Vasquez, the vessel’s 30-year-old captain, was sentenced to four years and six months in federal prison. Alexis Martinez-Preciado, his 20-year-old cousin and co-captain, was sentenced to four years and two months.
Both men pleaded guilty in April to two counts related to human smuggling for financial gain in connection with the deadly incident that occurred Nov. 26, 2022.
According to documents filed in the case, Preciado is a fisherman who was recruited to captain the panga because of his boating skills. With help from his cousin who was navigating, they set off from Mexico in the predawn darkness with eight other people — seven adults and an unaccompanied minor — and arrived around 6 a.m. near the shoreline off Cortez Avenue south of the Imperial Beach Pier.
Before they reached the sand, Preciado and Martinez instructed the other people to remove their life jackets, according to prosecutors, who said this is a common practice “so passengers are quicker and more inconspicuous making their way to the shore.” The captain and co-captain also removed their life jackets.
But before the panga reached the shore, a wave capsized the vessel. Surfers and Imperial Beach lifeguards tried to help, but only seven of the 10 people on board made it to the sand. The bodies of two of the drowning victims were recovered that morning while the third was discovered on the beach days later.
The panga that capsized on Nov. 26, 2022, off Imperial Beach. Three of the 10 people on board died.
(via U.S. District Court filing)
One of the victims was 37-year-old Mexican resident Julia Estebana Chan Canul. The other victim was a 47-year-old Mexican man who has been identified, but whose name was unavailable. The third victim, a young woman, remains unidentified, though authorities believe she was from Guatemala.
An attorney for the captain wrote in a sentencing memorandum that Preciado is a married father of two who became financially desperate after he suffered a heart attack in 2021 and his mother suffered a stroke the next year.
“Mr. Preciado agreed to participate in this offense hoping that it would be a way he could make some additional money quickly,” wrote defense attorney Brittany Sherron.
If successful, Preciado would have been paid more money than he could make in 16 months as a fisherman, Sherron wrote.
“He was made to believe the job would be easy and secure, and that nobody would be put in harm’s way,” Sherron wrote. “When it was too late to back out, he learned that was certainly not the case.”
Martinez’s attorney, Lewis Muller, wrote that when the cousins realized the trip was not safe, they called the people who hired them “to ask for permission to turn around but were threatened if they did not proceed.”
Sherron wrote that her client “is grief-stricken and full of remorse for his participation in this offense.” Muller wrote that Martinez “has been emotionally devastated” and “will live with the guilt of his actions for the rest of his life.”
Both men are expected to be deported to Mexico when their prison sentences end.
