A federal judge in Del Rio, Texas, sentenced a Houston man tied to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel to 35 years in prison this week for his part in a human smuggling operation that left three people dead in 2022.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Alia Moses handed down the sentence to 26-year-old Roland Heit Martinez. Because Martinez was already serving an 11-year sentence from a separate but related drug trafficking case, the new sentence will run consecutively, bringing his combined total to 46 years in federal prison.
Martinez pleaded guilty to the human smuggling charge in December 2025. He has been in federal custody since January 2023, when he was first arrested on the drug trafficking charge.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, Martinez was an active participant in a CJNG-linked smuggling network that ran operations across Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama and Louisiana. Prosecutors said he coordinated drivers for the smuggling runs and helped move payments to other members of the network through money transfers and Cash App.
Investigators tied Martinez to an August 2022 smuggling attempt that turned deadly in Kimble County, Texas. A vehicle carrying migrants crashed in a single-vehicle wreck after the driver tried to evade law enforcement, killing the U.S. driver and two migrants.
