Two soldiers could each face up to ten years in federal prison after confessing that they agreed to help smuggle undocumented immigrants past a Border Patrol checkpoint in return for $1500. On Tuesday, 25-year-old Joseph Edmond Cleveland and 19-year-old Marco Antonio Nava Jr. both submitted guilty pleas in court. This was five months after their apprehension when driving two undocumented Mexican immigrants through a South Texas immigration checkpoint, says the Southern District of Texas US Attorney’s Office.
The soldiers drove to the immigration checkpoint, which is around 75 miles to the north of the US-Mexico border with the two men, Jose Osorio-Rebollar and Marcelino Oliveros-Padilla, in the rear passenger seats of the vehicle. A patrol agent, during an inspection, asked Oliveros-Padilla his intended destination. According to court records, Oliveros-Padilla replied “San Antonio”.
Authorities were later informed by the two Mexicans that they had illegally entered the US eight days earlier via a raft and had already been relocated twice to different trailer homes. An unidentified person from one of those homes told the Mexicans that they would be picked up and transported to Houston on June 18.
Cleveland and Nada were initially released but then placed under arrest in October after the grand jury indicted them on charges of bringing in and harboring undocumented immigrants. Few other details were released about the undocumented Mexican immigrants, and no further information will be forthcoming as they are witnesses in the proceedings against the soldiers, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.