MCALLEN, TEXAS (AP) -- A Mexican man has been sentenced to prison for trying to smuggle illegal immigrants onto a charter flight bound for San Antonio from a Texas border airport.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa in McAllen sentenced 39-year-old Jorge Luis Gallegos Avila of Tampico, Mexico, to 16 months in prison.
Court records say U.S. agents last June 20 found five illegal immigrants trying to board the charter flight at McAllen-Miller International Airport.
Gallegos, who had dropped the immigrants off at the airport, was also in the country illegally.
Prosecutors say Gallegos kept the immigrants at stash houses in the area before taking them to the airport that day.
He pleaded guilty in August to conspiring to harbor, conceal and shield illegal immigrants and was sentenced Wednesday.
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