A Houston man linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel drew a 35-year federal prison term this week for coordinating a deadly human smuggling run that killed three people in Texas, pushing his total time behind bars to 46 years.
Roland Heit Martinez, 26, appeared before U.S. District Court Chief Judge Alia Moses in Del Rio, Texas, and received the new sentence for his role in the CJNG-linked operation. The term runs consecutive to an existing 11-year sentence he is already serving on a connected drug trafficking case.
Martinez pleaded guilty in December 2025 to the deadly human smuggling charge. Federal authorities had held him in custody since January 2023 after his arrest on the related drug case. Breitbart News reported the sentencing details from the Western District of Texas.
Prosecutors described Martinez as an active member of a human smuggling network tied to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known as CJNG. That network moved people across Mexico into Texas and onward through Oklahoma, Alabama, and Louisiana.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas said Martinez coordinated drivers for the smuggling loads. He also helped handle payments to network members through money transfers and the Cash App platform.
Those coordination duties tied him to an August 2022 smuggling attempt that ended in a single-vehicle crash in Kimble County, Texas. The driver, a U.S. citizen, and two migrants died when the vehicle wrecked while trying to evade authorities.
Martinez was identified as one of the coordinators behind that run. The crash turned a routine smuggling trip into a triple fatality on a Texas roadway far from the border.
Kimble County sits in the Texas Hill Country, well north of the Rio Grande. The wreck showed how far inland these loads travel once they clear the initial crossing.
Judge Moses ordered the 35-year term to run after the 11-year drug sentence already on the books. The consecutive structure means Martinez faces 46 years total in federal prison.
He entered federal custody in January 2023 on the drug trafficking arrest. The smuggling plea came nearly three years later, in December 2025, before the recent sentencing hearing in Del Rio.
The case stayed inside the Western District of Texas, the same federal jurisdiction that covers large stretches of the border and the interior corridors smugglers use.
CJNG has built a reputation for violence and control of trafficking routes. Martinez’s role as a coordinator who moved money and drivers put him inside that structure rather than on the street as a low-level courier.
Federal prosecutors laid out a network that did not stop at the border. Once loads crossed from Mexico into Texas, the same operation pushed people through Oklahoma, Alabama, and Louisiana.
Martinez, a Houston resident, sat in the middle of that pipeline. Houston’s size and highway connections make it a natural hub for secondary movement after the initial entry.
The payment system mixed traditional money transfers with Cash App. That mix let the network move cash quickly among drivers and coordinators without always relying on bulk currency.
Three people died because a load tried to outrun law enforcement on a Texas road. The U.S. driver and the two migrants never reached the next drop point.
The sentencing closes the federal case against Martinez on the smuggling charge. It leaves the longer record of cartel-linked traffic still moving through the same corridors.
When cartel coordinators treat Texas highways as extension of their routes, the bill comes due in prison time and in lives lost far from the river.
