A 27-year-old woman who was in Texas illegally will spend more than five years in prison for her role as the bookkeeper for a human smuggling group from a faction of Los Zetas responsible for moving more than 1,900 migrants through the border city of Laredo.
This week, Giovana Lozano Hernandez went before a U.S. district judge in Laredo, who handed down a 70-month sentence. As she was in the country illegally, she will be deported after finishing her sentence. Lozano pleaded guilty to federal human smuggling charges in September 2025 as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.
The original case centered around Lozano’s husband, Danny Nunez, who ran a human smuggling organization tied to the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas. Nunez also pleaded guilty in 2025 and has since been sentenced to ten years in federal prison.
Court documents from the case revealed that federal agents began looking into the group in 2024 in connection with the large-scale smuggling of migrants.
According to information released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the group was responsible for smuggling more than 1,900 migrants into Texas from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. Lozano worked for the organization as the bookkeeper, managing her husband’s finances, including detailed ledgers and records of the migrants and the amounts owed or paid.
Lozano also kept records of the money paid and spent on moving, housing, and feeding each migrant that they were smuggling into the country. Federal prosecutors revealed that they had been able to tie the smuggling organization to a 2023 case where authorities found 101 migrants trapped in a tractor-trailer.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart News Foundation. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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