WASHINGTON — Prosecutors have charged the leader of an international human smuggling ring who conspired to illegally bring dozens of migrants across the northern border to New York City and other locations in the US, according to unsealed court filings.
Francisco Antonio Luna Rosado, a 27-year-old migrant from the Dominican Republic, ran a roughly 70-member trafficking group that sought to bring at least 48 illegal immigrants — including young children — from Central and South America from Canada into northern Vermont, the filings stated.
From there, filings in Vermont district court Wednesday also alleged, Jesus Hernandez Ortiz, 37, of Puerto Rico and other members in 70-person encrypted chat messaging platform would drive to pick up the migrants to “New York City and beyond.”
The migrants were flown into southern Canada before linking up with Luna Rosado using cellular location data on the messaging app.
Ortiz on Sept. 17 of that year was stopped by law enforcement while transporting the dozen illegal immigrants south from the northern border in the back of a Home Depot van at 4 a.m.
There were two children in the group including a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old.
Ortiz told officers “he had picked these people up in a Canadian field and that he did not know who they were,” per the latest court filing.
The proceeds, which topped $10,000, were purportedly laundered by Luna Rosado as part of the operation that stretched from August 2022 to March 2024 — leading to two additional charges.
Between 2024 and 2025, the 300-mile sector of border separating Vermont and Canada saw a 95% drop in illegal crossings. More than 1,100 were apprehended in March 2024, compared with just 54 one year later.
Total northern border crossings fell from 12,085 in November 2024 to 4,098 in February 2025, per Customs and Border Protection data.
At least 20 Romanian nationals were also arrested in November 2023 following a crossing from Canada into Maine as part of transnational criminal enterprise.
CBP data also show 189,402 migrants were arrested on the northern US border in fiscal year 2023, 109,535 were apprehended in 2022 and 27,180 were caught in 2021.
New York City data later showed that the cost to taxpayers of shouldering welfare and other services for migrants surpassed $5 billion.
Ortiz is expected to make an initial appearance in a Burlington, Vermont, federal courtroom on Feb. 17.
Prosecutors have asked courts to order both detained pending trial, and noted that while Ortiz is in custody in the District of Vermont, Luna Rosado currently resides in Ocala, Florida, and is being transported north for detention in the same district by the US Marshals.
“The defendant poses a serious risk of flight and nonappearance,” they wrote of Luna Rosado. Public defenders for the accused did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
