20 illegals found in CTPAT truck led by former TXTA Chairman

On May 22, 2026, Texas DPS troopers stopped a Volvo truck in Webb County. The driver tried to run. When troopers searched the sleeper berth, they found 20 people hidden inside, including four children.

While DPS and CBP do their very best to hide the identities of these smuggler trucks, we know the truck was operating under the identity of Super Transport International LTD, DOT 692863, out of Laredo, Texas. A 250-truck, 220-driver cross-border carrier. Hazmat authorized. Satisfactory safety rating.

The carrier was CTPAT certified by Customs and Border Protection. Every screening system in the American freight industry gave this carrier a passing grade. So could this be a case of carrier identity theft? Sure, but the numbers that sit on the side of your truck are the indicators that the public has to make a determination on who is operating the truck.

We reached out to Super Transport International via email, but received no response. That leaves us with public record and door markings only.

The same week as the STI stop, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Texas announced 271 new immigration and border security cases as part of Operation Take Back America, including 19 people allegedly involved in human smuggling.

One of those cases involved a truck driver named Juan Nasario-Reyes who arrived at a checkpoint on May 16 and told officers his vehicle was empty. A K-9 alerted. Law enforcement found four people hidden in the cab and 38 more locked in the trailer from the outside. The temperature inside was 92. 5 degrees.

The Southern District of Texas, which covers 43 counties from Houston to Laredo, remains one of the busiest federal districts in the country for these cases. The I-35 corridor between Laredo and San Antonio has become one of the most active truck smuggling routes in the country.

DPS has made multiple interdictions using commercial motor vehicles in this stretch in the last two years alone. window. googletag = window. googletag || {cmd: []}; googletag. cmd. push(function() {googletag. defineSlot('/21776187881/FW-Responsive-Main_Content-Slot1', [[300, 100], [320, 50], [728, 90], [468, 60]], 'div-gpt-ad-1709668545404-0').

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display('div-gpt-ad-1709668545404-0'); }); On November 28, 2025, a DPS trooper pulled over a white Freightliner on I-35 in La Salle County for driving on the improved shoulder. The driver, John David Amaya, 24, of Laredo, did not have a CDL. A K-9 search found 23 people from five countries concealed in the sleeper berth.

Amaya was charged with 23 counts of smuggling persons. DPS blurred the truck’s identifying markings in its body-cam footage release, and no news outlet identified the carrier. The carrier in that incident remains publicly unknown. I’m going to argue that anonymity is part of the problem.

If a carrier is hiring, employing, or allowing drivers to use their equipment where trafficking takes place, it needs to be documented, trended and scrutinized. In January 2025, 16 people were found hidden in a Kenworth tractor in Webb County. In May 2022, 203 migrants were discovered in two semi trucks in Webb County.

In January 2022, 28 were found in a tractor-trailer on I-35 in Webb County. The pattern is not new and it’s a hot trafficking lane. What is new is that one of the trucks now belongs to a CTPAT-certified carrier led by a former state trucking association chairman.

DPS and CBP did not disclose who this carrier was, just like they seldom disclose who the carrier is. Fortunately, we used our means to determine that this truck belonged to Super Transport International and was, in fact, CTPAT-certified. Super Transport International was founded in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in 1988 by Ernesto Gaytan Sr.

The US entity was established in the mid 1990s out of 13519 Mercury Drive in Laredo. Today, the company reports 250 power units, 220 drivers, and 23 million miles a year. It hauls for Tesla, CH Robinson, Diamond Pet Foods, Brose Mexico, Faurecia, Marelli, and 361 other freight principals recorded in FMCSA inspection data.

The company’s president is Ernesto Gaytan Jr. In July 2021, Gaytan was appointed Chairman of the Texas Trucking Association, the first Hispanic, first Mexican American, and youngest person to hold the position. He served through July 2022.

TXTA honored him at the outgoing chairman’s dinner for “his expertise on border issues, something that has been at the forefront of trucking this year.” Nothing we found establishes that Gaytan knew about the smuggling, directed it, or had any involvement beyond owning the company, but the truck carries the company’s markings.

During his chairmanship, Gaytan championed Texas House Bill 19, which went into effect on September 1, 2021. HB 19 regulates how plaintiff attorneys can bring commercial ve